by Jeff Seats
As if a light bulb clicked on in her head seeing all the pieces falling together Ellie responded. “Unless you need every ounce of blood to strengthen up, but you have to do so without too much human carnage. Otherwise, we might catch wind and find him.”
“God . . . What if it’s Vlad?”
“We have to tell the commander.”
“About what? Aside from a drunk college kid calling a radio shrink we have no other info to provide. But now we have the haystack we’re looking for, so we just dig deeper looking for that needle. Checking the more obscure sources like this radio show about weird murders would be a start. I mean, just how much can murder scenes left by a feeding vamp be ignored?”
“Right . . . I can still see Richard being torn apart whenever I close my eyes. There he is held up by Vlad, eyes bugging out with surprise just before . . ..”
“Yeah, me too.”
The conversation came to an abrupt halt as the two got lost in memories of a shared and horrific experience that not many would believe nor understand no matter how open-minded.
They both had been on a bus that broke down outside of RESSITE-ALPHA aka, Vamp Town; one of several secret government reservations overseen by the Center for Spectral Control —CSC—housing the various monsters that plagued the world. Vamp Town was the nickname for SITE-ALPHA, which was the main home for the majority of the world’s vampires.
At that time Ellie had been in an abusive relationship with her boyfriend, Richard Conroy. “Dick” to Paul and everyone else who had the misfortune of meeting him on that trip (or any time, Paul surmised).
Nine lost passengers stumbled into the seemingly perfect, yet empty, small-town U.S.A., smack dab in the middle of the empty high desert of Eastern Oregon, searching for someone to help them, but there was no indication of any life whatsoever. Only strangely out-of-place vacant buildings. As the sun started to set, they finally came upon a dive bar called the Bucket of Blood, which turned out to be an appropriate name for a joint in a town populated by vampires. Within minutes, it had become crowded with the locals who hungrily eyed the passengers.
One by one, the lost travelers were culled away from the “herd” until there remained only four humans left in a place full of blood-eaters. Steph, who was lost the first time Vladimir (a big shot amongst the local blood-sucking set), locked his eyes on her, Paul, Ellie and her boyfriend Dick. Vlad killed Dick, in a none-too-pretty way, then allowed his followers to gorge on his remains; their first taste of fresh human blood in over one hundred years. Steph became one of Vlad’s vampire family.
The CSC had to send an Action Team and two agents, Liz Adams and Craig Wright, to try and rescue as many of the humans as they could. Ellie and Paul were the only ones who had managed to avoid a grizzly demise, however. And their reward? Since the knowledge of vampires being real had to be kept in utter secrecy, they had the choice to either spend the remainder of their days sequestered away from all humanity or join the very organization that had rescued them. (As long as they could pass the training program.)
That day one bus driver, seven passengers, and three first responders died. In addition to the heavy human toll, Vladimir Rurik fled the reservation along with several of his allies. The CSC had been looking for him ever since.
In an attempt to fill the uncomfortable silence, Paul clicked the radio back on.
“—and my mother thinks the same way I do.”
“That may be the case, John, but if what you just said was true why are you still living with him?”
“But he doesn’t really mean to hurt me he’s just frustrated with his job. He does love me.”
“There is no good way to say this, John, but you are being abused.”
Paul quickly turned off the radio again. That was another smooth move on his part. Afraid of what he was going to see, he nevertheless, looked towards Ellie for her reaction. She had focused on the monitor in front of her, clicking through something on the internet. Face blank. Oh, he knew hiding behind that facade was raw emotion brewing. Not that he blamed her at all and not that he felt especially responsible. But damn it, there were times he could pick at a scab without even knowing it until he reopened the wound and the blood flowed again.
“So, have you noticed anything about Craig lately?” Paul asked more like another attempt to change the subject.
The dark cloud that had been swirling around Ellie’s head appeared to lift a slight amount. “What? You mean how distracted and moody he seems to be? No.”
“The scuttle is that one of his brothers died. Maybe that’s it. I really don’t know him well enough, but I’ve also heard that before Liz he lost a partner in a hunt. Had to put her down. Then there was Saunders last month . . ..” Paul’s voice trailed off.
“Yeah, the Saunders thing was bad. They were supposed to be best friends. Been here together since their investiture, I heard. But didn’t he die outright? I mean, Agent Wright didn’t actually kill him.”
“What’s that got to do with anything? He still had to de-cap his friend. You think it could be easy?”
“I wonder . . .. ” Ellie began to ask.
“What?”
“Well, it seems like there could be the possibility that at some point we may have to . . . you know . . . put someone who has been injured by a vamp or lycan down ourselves. I wonder if I could do it.”
Paul deliberately looked into her eyes then glanced away uncomfortably.
“Liz did on her first night on the job coming to save us,” Ellie continued, “But he was someone she didn’t know. Had just met on the Osprey flight in fact.”
Then she looked Paul square into his eyes, probing deep as if she would be able to see truth or falsehood. “Could you shoot me?”
“What the hell kinda question is that?”
“Could you? If I got bitten, could . . . you . . . kill . . . me?”
Paul shot up from his seat abruptly and turned away from Ellie. “I’m not answering stupid questions!”
“I think I could do it.” She said with conviction. “I think I could shoot you.”
“Glad to know,” he said like a hurt puppy.
“You’d prefer to be turned into a monster?”
“I didn’t say that—”
“Then what are you saying?”
He paused, not answering for a long moment. He opened his mouth to say something but closed it and sat back down.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t quite catch what you just said,” Ellie poked at him.
THE OLD MAN stood up from the table and offered his wife a hand. As she buttoned up her coat, he drained the last drops of coffee from his cup and then both left the Starbucks waving to the morning crew. Outside they proceeded to the intersection. The man put a protective arm around his wife’s shoulders and drew her in closer. This section on Hawthorne in the morning could be treacherous to cross, even when doing so with the lights were in your favor. There were too many people in a rush to get downtown to work, and a twenty-mile speed limit was simply too slow for some, tempting the hares to dodge in and out around perceived tortoises; seeming more like a NASCAR race than a morning commute. He looked twice before setting foot on the pavement then ushered his wife across and towards home. Their path took them past the storefront where a street kid had staked out his home for the preceding night. They had seen curled up in a sleeping bag as they walked past him an hour earlier. They stopped. To them he was still asleep. The woman pulled out a couple of quarters from her coat pocket, and gingerly dropped them into his cup, not wanting to make any noise that might wake the now sleeping boy. Poor thing.
“You know there really ought to be a way to help these homeless people,” she said.
“It’s getting worse for sure.” Her husband said.
The woman then dug her hand into her bag and found a few more coins. She pulled them out and took a step towards the slumped-over boy to reach his cup one more time. She slipped on something slick that hadn’t been there a moment earlier. As she reached
out reflexively to her husband for support, the coins fell from her hand, missing the cup, and clattered on to the terracotta tiles of the entryway. Worried that she might wake the boy and then have to engage with him, she quickly stepped back. The woman clutched both her bag and husband tighter, not noticing the dark prints that her shoe was leaving as they hastily departed.
Moments later the headlights of an approaching car washed over the old couple as it pulled up to the curb near them. The car stopped. The passenger door opened, and a young woman leaned over and kissed the driver—her boyfriend— before she jumped out.
“Thanks for the ride. See you tonight?”
“Where else would I be?” He winked.
“Oh, shit. There’s that kid again.” She said looking at the boy’s dirty Converse sticking out of the doorway. “I told him that he was trespassing and the next time . . ..” She fished her phone out of her bag and hit the speed dial for the Police nonemergency number. “Hello. I want to report a trespasser. 3642 SE Hawthorne. Knit-Purl Yarns. My name is Laurie Laney. I work here . . . there. Opening shift. Yes. I don’t feel safe rousting him. He got a little surly the last time. Yes, I can wait. Thank you.” She looked at her boyfriend. “Cops’ll be here soon, Don.”
“If I had my way these scumbags wouldn’t be allowed to sleep wherever they wanted.”
“You can’t lock them all up.”
“Why not?” His steely smile told her that he was serious.
“When you become mayor of the city you can do just that,” she responded jokingly.
“Among other things.”
“Speaking of the city, you’d better get going, or you won’t be first in line at the permit office. You hate waiting more than you hate the homeless.”
He looked at the kid in the alcove then looked at his girlfriend and then at his watch and back at his girlfriend, “Okay, but wait in the Starbucks until they arrive.”
She gave him a blank stare.
“Please.”
“You’re sweet,” she responded, cracking his stone-face act with a smile. “I’ll be okay.” She closed the door and crossed the street heading to the coffee shop, blowing a kiss to her boyfriend as she did so.
Don smiled and waved back, but stayed in place waiting for her to enter the store. Only when she turned and shooed him away in an overly dramatic wave did he put the vehicle into gear. He made a deliberate effort to slowly pass the street kid to give him a menacing stare-down in case he was awake. But the kid didn’t move. As he accelerated away, Don tapped the horn a couple of times saying goodbye to his girlfriend, then sped away.
Laurie waved again as he drove off then turned to the counter and ordered her top-of-the-day, caramel mocha Frappuccino. No whip. It was the smallest of gestures to health and the desire to lose a few pounds before their wedding next fall.
“Was that guy across the street there when you opened?” She asked the barista.
“Oh, Blunt? Yeah. He’s there a lot.”
“Tell me about it.”
“That’s strange.” The barista had crossed to the window for a better look. “He looks passed out now but when I got here it seemed like he was awake and getting himself ready for ‘business,’ just like me.” The barista shook her head. “My dad would disown me and let me rot on the street if I ever acted like that.”
“Looks to me that has already happened to him.”
The loud BRURP of a siren told them the policed had arrived. Red and blue lights from the tops of two squad cars flashed across all the buildings and reflected in the store windows. One of the cops pulled up in front of the doorway while the other drove up onto the sidewalk a few feet back, then the policemen emerged from their cars and approached the offender.
“I guess they’ll be wanting to talk to me. See you later.” Laurie said and went outside and across the street to the yarn shop. She had expected to see the two officers rousting the kid to get on his feet, possibly arresting him. That was the deal. Register with the police, and place one of their No Trespassing signs in the window, and if someone camps in the doorway on your property, they can get arrested. She didn’t want things to go that far, but she was tired of having to get him to leave the door un-blocked so she could do her job. Not to mention having to clean up his night’s worth of wrappers, half-eaten food, and God knew what else. Just because he saw no value in working, didn’t mean he should prevent her from doing so.
One of the officers had stepped away from the storefront and was speaking into the radio mic attached to his shoulder. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but she could see a bit more of the kid slumped in her doorway, and what she saw suggested he might not be able to move on his own. Overdose she suspected, though she had never had to clean up needles as a part of his mess. The officer talking on a radio held up his hand to stop her as she got closer to the doorway. He gave her a look that said, “Be with you in a sec.” And finished speaking into the radio. “Yeah, doesn’t look good. We’ll leave it for homicide.” Then he turned his attention to Laurie. “Now. You the one who called?”
“Yes. I’m Laurie Laney. I open the shop weekdays.” She looked around the shoulder of the policeman at the kid. “Is there something wrong with him.”
“Did he confront you in any way? Did he talk to you?”
“No. He was lying there just like he is now.” Then she saw the blood oozing out from under the kid’s body. “Oh, God! I . . . I didn’t see any blood before . . . Is he dead?” Laurie stared at the body in disbelief.
“Looks that way.”
“How?” Laurie’s knees seemed like they were about to fold beneath her. She had seen dead bodies before: her grandmother in the open casket, her favorite aunt minutes after she passed in a hospital bed, that guy on the gurney who had gotten hit crossing the street a block away last year. But none of those dead had the graphic imagery of seeping blood.
“That’s why we’re talking to you. See anyone else around here when you arrived?”
“Um,” She tried to remember. She got out of the car, saw the kid, made the call. “Yes, an older couple was walking past here when I got out of the car.”
“Might explain the footprints leading away from the body. Just in case can I see the bottoms of your shoes?”
“Sure, I guess.” Laurie lifted one foot. The cop directed his flashlight down at it, and then she brought up the other which he examined as well.
“Clean. Those aren’t your feet. Look, I’m going to have to ask you to stick around so you can speak with the detectives when they arrive. You may as well wait over in the coffee shop. You won’t be opening the yarn store anytime soon anyway.”
««« ‡ »»» LAURIE SIPPED ON the end dribbles of her Frappuccino and stared out the window. She watched the whole thing unfold across the street like it was one of the many crime dramas she liked on TV. It was all so familiar. First, the homicide detectives showed up, followed by the coroner. Someone shot photos of the crime scene. A bunch of other stuff happened—mostly masked by cops standing around, their parked cars, and the growing crowd of rubberneckers—and finally, the boy’s body was zipped into a black bag and loaded into a vehicle and driven away.
She had spoken with a couple of detectives and told them the same thing she said to the first officer who arrived after her initial call. And now she waited to be released so she could get on with her day.
As she wondered who was going to clean up the blood around the entrance to the shop, a car with an Uber sticker pulled up. A man stepped out with a notepad and started taking pictures with his phone. Then he walked towards the crime scene.
««« ‡ »»» THE REPORTER GOT out of the Uber in front of a Starbucks. The area across the street in front of a small yarn shop—Knit Purl. Cute.—was cordoned off by streams of bright yellow crime scene tape and the police were fully engaged in their investigative. The five-dollar scanner app on his phone had steered him to the right location again. TC thanked the driver and closed the car door. For a minute he stood
and watched the activity, then turned and looked around trying to gain some understanding of the crime scene and its surroundings. He set the camera on his phone to pano and took a one-eighty degree shot of the area followed by a quick video of the same scene.
Before crossing the street and asking questions, he paused a bit and watched the action. He especially liked to scope out the bystanders and listen to them chat. Just the looks on their faces told him a lot about what had happened. In this case, a grisly murder, or so he had hoped. Not that he was ghoulish. But if this turned out to be just another gang death or drug overdose, then he may have finally lost the trail of his big story. But, based on the talk from the gathered onlookers and what they were saying:
“Lots of blood.”
“Neck wound.”
“Horrible.”
TC felt pretty sure he was on the right path, so he walked over
to the nearest cop who wasn’t doing anything in particular. He had found asking the guys who were there as backup a question or two got better results. Now all he had to do was ask a few of the right questions.
Tapping on the recorder app for his phone, he stepped up to the officer he had targeted and held it up to his mouth, “TC Penner, Rain City Weekly,” he said identifying himself.
The officer raised his eyebrow in acknowledgment that TC was talking to him, but said nothing.
“So, what happened here?”
“Street kid. Dead.”
“Dead? No cause?”
“Well, a bit too early for that. But when I got here, there was blood pooling around his head.”
“See any strange wounds?”
The cop thought a moment. “I guess it was strange. Didn’t hit me till you asked, but yeah. I’d say his neck had been bitten open that didn’t sound so f-ing crazy.”
The reporter tried to see the dead body beyond the cop’s shoulder. His eyes flashed wide as he caught a glimpse of the stiff’s neck in the beam of a flashlight as they were zipping his remains into the black bag.
Calling what he saw a bite wound was a little bit of a sanitized term. The remains of this poor kid was ghastly—throat torn open, chunk of neck hanging by a flap of skin, and a mess of blood.