by Bob McGee
The would-be robber's friend proved to be a lot less subtle. A lot larger than his Raider friend, this one actually looked like a football player.
He sprinted forward and looked to tackle the old man by the waist.
Van Helsing side-stepped the wannabe linebacker like a matador and stuck his foot out.
The man tripped over Van Helsing's shoes and careened onto the tracks just as a train arrived.
Van Helsing turned his attention back to the Oakland Raider fan and rammed his cane up into the man's crotch.
“How much are they paying your sorry ass?”
The man grabbed his nuts and rolled over in pain. Then he sprang up and hobbled away toward the opposite escalator.
Van Helsing noticed one young man filming the action on his cell phone. He walked up to him,
snatched the phone out of his hand and threw it to the ground.
“Hey!” the man screamed as Van Helsing's foot stomped down on the phone.
“Amateurs,” Van Helsing said as he stepped onto the escalator.
Van Helsing exited the street and was impressed that the police arrived in such short order.
They ran right by him, however, none the wiser that this feeble looking old man had caused such chaos.
Why bother? He thought. They started it. He finished it.
Who were those idiots? Could have been Corpheus' men. Or maybe Rebius. Fuck 'em both. Or they could have been common thugs looking for low-hanging fruit. Van Helsing's gut told him that those men had specifically targeted him. And he always went with his gut instinct.
He felt inside his coat pocket for his concealed weapons. He fingered the thin wooden stake, sharpened to a razor point, and felt assured that he had that handy.
But he liked using the good old-fashioned cross to the forehead. He liked how it burned the shit out of them. He used to carry around a vial of holy water as well but they would invariably break and it would look like he pissed himself.
Van Helsing turned the corner and headed down Montgomery Street, blending in with the corporate crowd.
And then he right smack dab into a police officer.
This guy was good, whoever he was, Van Helsing thought. Not too many people can come up on him by surprise.
The man wore a police officer's uniform but Van Helsing immediately noticed the black leather belt in the shape of a grinning skull. Black boots with steel pointed tips.
“You're no damn cop,” Van Helsing said.
The man smirked
And he was big. At least six-feet five with about fifty pounds more muscle than the earlier hired help.
Van Helsing swung his cane but the officer grabbed it and swept his legs.
The old man fell to the concrete like a heavy sack of potatoes. He felt an excruciating spasm of pain that extended from his hip up to his spine. He groaned as if he had been electrocuted.
The officer rolled him over and got him into an arm bar, grabbing his wrist and wrenching it backward toward his head.
Onlookers backed off and circled the fracas.
“Go easy on him,” an older woman said, clearly sympathizing with Van Helsing's age.
“10-4, I got him,” the officer said into his walkie-talkie before he placed plastic cuffs on Van Helsing's wrists.
“You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you.”
A dark blue Cadillac Escalade screeched up onto the sidewalk. The back door flew open and the officer tossed Van Helsing inside and slammed the door shut.
The wheels screeched as the car sped away.
The man's large presence took up the entire back seat. Van Helsing could see the driver was female but couldn't make out her face. The man smelled of stale urine, like someone who spent a lot of time in rest homes.
“Time to meet your fate, old man. But you had to have known this was coming. You can't stave off the biters forever. You're finite. They're immortal. Crusty old turds like you are like a fart in the wind. But those vampires. Holy fuck! Pure evil. Pure and cold.”
“Fuck off,” the old man said.
“Yeah, they said you were crusty.” The man backhanded him across the face. Van Helsing turned away then the man punched him in the stomach.
Van Helsing never felt such hideous pain in his life. He coughed and coughed then spat out blood.
“You're fucking up my carpet,” the man said. “Name's Hugo, by the way. I was really looking forward to meeting you. And your granddaughter. She is ready for some loving. Good God, I can't wait-”
“You so much as look at her I'll-”
“What? I'll rip off your dick and shove it up her snatch. But ideally I have something else in mind. I've seen her. God, I've seen her. Her lush brown hair. Green eyes. Not just green, but emerald green. She doesn't smile much. But for what I have planned she won't be doing much of that anyway.”
The man's voice was rough and low-pitched, like a sewer pipe being dragged across gravel.
Van Helsing looked out the window at the foggy streets of San Francisco. He strained his ears to pick up the warbled strains of a distant siren.
A siren that he hoped was coming closer.
But was instead fading away.
And then he felt a hood go over his head.
The old man felt like the trip took a total of thirty minutes.
The car stopped and he heard the door open.
Hugo grabbed him by the arms and ripped him out of his seat. He dragged him across what he felt was a gravel lot then he heard a door open.
He felt his felt scrape across a lush carpet. Another door opened and he was thrown into a room where he landed on hard cement.
Van Helsing rolled up to his knees then Hugo took the hood off his head.
The old man's eyes had a hard time adjusting to the dark. Then a small light flicked on. He looked up and saw charcoal drawings of different men and women on the wall.
“Recognize any of them?” Hugo mocked.
Van Helsing struggled to his feet. Scrutinizing the photos now, he recognized them.
Vampires. Victims of a stake to the heart courtesy of his own hands.
“Who are you with?” Van Helsing demanded. “Corpheus? Rebius?”
Hugo laughed and shook his head.
“No,” he said. “The one I worship is much more powerful than either of those.”
Two more men entered the room. They looked like local thugs, another one with a Raiders jacket. The other wore a Motley Crew t-shirt. The one with the Raiders coat handed Hugo a toolbox.
“Hold him down,” Hugo commanded as he rummaged through the tool box.
Still woozy, Van Helsing could not put up much of a fight.
“See vampires and sadists are a lot a like. I'd say we compliment each other very well. She helps me think of ways to hurt people that you wouldn't believe. Even scares me sometimes.”
The two young men picked up Van Helsing. Then one held his arm up and pressed his hand against the wall.
Van Helsing saw Hugo come toward him with a nine inch nail and a hammer.
“You like to drive stakes through their hearts,” he said. “Here's what that feels like.”
Hugo pressed the nail against the palm of Van Helsing's hand and slammed the hammer against it.
Van Helsing cried out in pain, his hand now impaled in the wooden wall.
Hugo took out another nail.
“Look at the size of this thing.” Hugo waved the nail in front of the old man's face. “Nothing is too good for you.”
The young man held up Van Helsing's left hand as Hugo drove the nail into his palm.
Hugo tossed the hammer to the floor then stood back admiring his work.
“The great Van Helsing nailed to the wall,” he laughed. “I can't help it. I try not to laugh but I can't. I've killed politicians. Cops. Judges. And now I'm serving up the great vampire slayer. Doesn't matter how vain or pompous or important a person thinks they are. When they meet me, they become a corpse.”
&n
bsp; The three men chuckled as they left the room and shut it behind them, leaving the old man in total dark
He couldn't wait to get his hands on Hugo. He would rip him to shreds. Maybe even torture him first.
But he thought of his granddaughter.
He knew Heather could take care of herself. But something about this smelled like a trap. He knew she would come looking for him.
He struggled against the nails in his hands. The pain had convulsed his muscles and he peed on himself. He screamed and grinded his teeth so hard that he crushed one of his ceramic crowns.
The nails that had been driven too deeply into the wall and they immobilized him. The blood had already begun to congeal around the entry wounds, rivulets of crimson dripped to the floor.
The pain was too much. And he was too old. His spirit as frail as a dried-up leaf.
Then everything went black.
It took a couple of years, but Heather Van Helsing finally found her “dream team.” Her grandfather stated constantly that she could not do the slayings alone. That she needed to surround herself with good hunters.
She had Vera and Constance. And Josie.
They all lost friends and family members in vampire attacks. Now they dedicated their lives to the cause of exterminating them from the earth.
And her final recruit had to be a real police officer.
Penny, still in uniform, met her and Josie inside the BART subway station.
“He has no cell phone?” Penny asked incredulously.
Heather just shook her head. “He's old school, what can I say?”
Penny shook her head. “This looks like a professional job.”
“Why?”
“Because we had a witness that said a uniformed police officer picked him. Then threw him into a blue SUV.”
Heather stood on the BART subway platform and scrutinized the patrons. Then she looked across at the dark tunnel and saw the approaching lights of an oncoming train. She remembered how one of the vampire cults had made their way underground through these tunnels and lived there for years.
“He always said this would happen,” Heather said. “Always warned us that they would try and hit him.”
“We'll find him,” Penny said although there could be some false reassurance detected in her voice. “We've found missing children. Hell, even missing dogs. We can damn sure find your grandfather.”
A police officer came up to the women. His name tag read “Mancini”.
“The surveillance footage is ready,” he said.
The women were led inside the BART satellite police station. A row of dimly lit monitors stood to one side.
“Here's where we see two guys jump him,” Mancini said as the footage played. “Your grandfather is quite a rough customer. He trips one of the punks and he falls straight into the path of the train. The other one he just slaps up a little bit but let's him go.”
“Anything else?” Penny asked.
“The footage goes as far as his exit from the station. He goes down Montgomery Street and we see him get arrested.”
“Stop the tape!” Heather said.
The officer complies and they examine the video still. The police officer standing above Van Helsing is quite large.
“Does he look like anyone we know?”
Mancini shook his head. “Nope.”
“How could they have known that he was on the train?”
“Could have been followed,” Penny offered.
Heather shook her head. “Grampa knew how to shake a tail. It looks like someone knew exactly where he was headed and where he would be.”
“And they didn't mind that they were being filmed,” Penny said.
“They're trying to play up the fear factor,” Heather said. “Remember vampire gangs play upon fear. The emotional fears people feel when they encounter the vampire are like food for them.”
“But these guys weren't vampires.”
“They're hired help,” Heather said. “Who they're bringing my grandfather to is what I'm worried about.”
“Who do you think it is?” Josie asked.
“I don't think this is any cult we've run into before. Rebius' team dresses like French aristocrats and wouldn't deign to hire thugs. Corpheus well, he's unpredictable but more of a loner and really doesn't work with humans. This is someone new.”
“Are we sure that it is vampires?” Penny asked.
“What else?”
“Could be a group operating independently.”
Heather trusted Penny's instinct. She was almost always right when it came to street-level crimes. But this was someone with some old school skill sets. There was no other way they could sneak up on old Van Helsing without some kind of preternatural skill.
“What could they want?” Penny asked.
“If they wanted to kill him, they would have done so at the point of attack. Or maybe they want to kill him later. Vampires are like that. They want to see the person that has done them wrong suffer.”
“They won't kill him quick,” Penny said.
“They'll take him and make him die slow,” Heather said. “We have no time to waste.”
Heather headed out of the substation and caught her own reflection in the BART train windows. She became sad that, only hours earlier, her grandfather had probably stared out of the same window.
She looked like Snow White, poisoned by the heritage of her surname, waiting for some relief from terror-filled nights, cross-bows under her pillow and the endless anxiety that comes when one is fated to both slay and be stalked by, vampires.
When stalking a vampire Heather was always able to take that inspirational leap and place herself into the undead's mind. What were his typical victims? One guy only targeted crack dealers. Another targeted prostitutes. But this group were specifically targeting her grandfather.
Heather entertained the thought that there could be a mole inside her group of slayers. But who? Only four other people knew that her grandfather would stop by and visit. And still, the old man refused to be escorted and live anything but a normal life.
“Vampires don't come out during the day,” he said.
But the old man had grown so ancient in his thinking that he didn't realize that the vampires had sophisticated ways of dealing with slayers now. They acquired wealth and contacts. Human contacts that they could employ to kill off their natural predators.
She took a head count of her slayer team. Josie's husband and daughter were attacked by vampires over a year ago. Her husband was turned and exterminated. The daughter was never found. Penny's own father was a police officer killed in the line of duty by a vampire. Vera and Constance were two rich girls who were orphaned by the age of fifteen. Her parents were killed by vampires as they vacationed in Hungary. They wanted revenge. But also liked to party. And they were now hurting for cash.
She had texted Constance and Vera earlier but they didn't respond.
Could they have been paid off by this rogue vampire group. Or perhaps they were the rogues themselves?
The fog refused to lift.
Heather texted Constance and Vera again to meet her outside her home. Her gray painted house looked like an abandoned prison. There were vines climbing up the walls and bars on the windows.
“Sorry we're late,” Constance said as they pulled up in a convertible Porsche. The girls were identical twins and the only way you can differentiate between the two was in their jewelry. Constance always wore a cross necklace with low-cut blouses that showed off her cleavage. Vera, on the other hand, wore a rabbit's foot around both wrists.
“Why didn't you text me back?” Heather demanded.
“Sorry,” Vera said. “We were out.”
“Out where?”
“Making friends and influencing people, shit, what's with the attitude?” Vera asked.
Heather grabbed the girl by the collar.
“My fucking grandfather is missing that's what's with the attitude.”
“Heather!” Cons
tance said. “Heather stop!”
“There was only four people who knew my grandfather was going to be on that train.”
“Come on, Heather!” Josie said. “You can't be serious.”
“Heather, no” Constance said.
“We're not your enemy, girl.” Vera said.
“No secrets,” Heather said. “When we say we're going to be someplace, we show up. We text back.”
“It ran out of juice okay?” Constance held up her cell phone. “That's the truth.”
A flood of thoughts gushed through Heather's mind. Both girls were used to the high life and now were pressed for cash. She had to entertain all possibilities. They may have wanted quick cash because they never really dedicated themselves to being slayers.
Vera pushed Heather's hands off her. Then she twisted Heather's hand over, palm up, and began reading it like a gypsy.
“Strong lines you have here, Heather,” Vera said. “Unusual lines. Not exactly what I would call the get married and settle down with two kids type. But your heart line is broken. And that will be a self-fulfilling prophecy if you don't start trusting people.”
“We're sorry,” Constance said. “I can't believe you would think we could turn on you. We are all haunted by the ghosts of are parents' murders. All of us. We would never join up or help those blood sucking mother fuckers. No matter what!”
The guilelessness in her voice made Heather soften.
“I'm sorry,” Heather said. “I don't know why I thought that.”
Vera let go of Heather's hand.
“The vampires want us to be paranoid,” Josie said. “Remember you taught us that.”
“We're here to help,” Constance said. “Both of us.”
Heather nodded her head.
Penny got a heads-up on the whereabouts of Van Helsing's first attacker on the subway platform. The surveillance footage matched the mug shot of Marvin Maxell. A small-time hood whose only priors had been drug trafficking.
She gave his address to Heather and they staked out the home.
Sure enough, they found a late model GTO with an Oakland Raider insignia painted on both of the doors.
Marvin stepped out of the vehicle and leapfrogged up his front steps. He looked both directions before he opened the door and then slammed it shut.