Contents
Title
Special Thanks
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Appearances
About the Author
Also by John G. Hartness
BONUS -
Hell on Heels
A Quincy Harker, Demon Hunter
Novella
By John G. Hartness
Falstaff Books
Charlotte, NC
Special Thanks to my Patrons!
Sheelagh
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Acknowledgements
A very heartfelt thanks to Melissa Gilbert of Clicking Keys for her all her help.
Thanks to Adrijus at Rockingbookcovers.com for the awesome cover.
Chapter 1
I was headed home after a particularly disgusting exorcism when my cell phone rang. I took a minute to find a dry spot on my jeans (the back of the knee is good for this, no matter what you do, unless you’re absolutely submerged, you usually stay dry there) and wipe off my hands before I answered.
“I’m tired, dirty, sober, and pissed off, so what do you want?” I growled into the phone.
“You have the sweetest phone voice,” said Detective Rebecca Gail Flynn of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, currently on special assignment to the Department of Homeland Security’s Paranormal Division, a division that didn’t officially exist. “How quickly can you get over here?”
“Where is here?” I asked. “Because if it’s your apartment and you’ve got the jacuzzi running, the answer is fifteen minutes. If it’s police headquarters, the answer is at least two hours.”
“Let’s try putting those two together and getting you to HQ in fifteen minutes. We’ve got a bad one,” Flynn replied.
“You think you’ve got a bad one. I’ve still got most of a bad one splattered all over my clothes. I’m going to have to bill these people for a new pair of shoes, at the very least. Do you have any idea how much food a person can eat when they’ve been possessed by a gluttony demon for a week? And do you have any idea what happens to that food when the demon is exorcised?”
“That’s a no on all counts, Harker, and I don’t give a shit. Just get your ass over here. You can shower in the locker room, and I’ll get you something to wear.”
“No dice,” I replied. “Meet me at my apartment in twenty. I’ll leave the door open.” I hung up on her protests and slid the phone into my pocket as I walked to my car. I tossed my exorcism bag into the trunk of my old burgundy Accord and shrugged out of my leather duster. It was a little ostentatious, but it looked the part of a wizard a lot more than I did, and it kept me from getting completely covered in puke on gigs like this. I emptied the pockets, then left the duster laying on top of a bush for the next homeless guy to find. Then I grabbed a towel from the trunk and wiped myself down as best as I could. I put another towel on the seat of the car and headed home to clean up, mentally tallying up the cost of the new wardrobe so I could add it to the client’s bill.
I was lathering up for a second scrub-down when I heard someone enter my apartment. “If that’s Detective Flynn, I’m in the shower. If it’s my order from Playmates R’ Us, I’m in the shower. If it’s anyone else, fuck off!” I called from the open door of my bathroom.
“Playmates R’ Us?” Flynn asked as she came in and leaned against the counter.
“A man can dream,” I replied, rinsing off and reaching down to turn off the water. I pulled the curtain back and grabbed a towel from the rack, a little disappointed that Detective Flynn had decided to give me my privacy. I wrapped a towel around my waist and stepped out into the bedroom. Flynn was sitting on the end of my bed, looking impatient.
“Where were you, Harker? Your clothes smell like shit,” she said, kicking the pile of puke-covered clothes even farther away. I had them all piled up on a towel to be taken out and burned. Days like this it was a damn good thing I have a rich uncle.
“Puke, actually. That’s the remnants of about thirteen pizzas and a gallon or two of ice cream, by my best guess.”
“What were you doing, teaching Ouija lessons to sorority girls?”
“That’s not a bad idea, and probably a fuckload cleaner than this gig. No, I was exorcising a fifteen-year-old bulimic who had suddenly started eating her family out of house and home. Seems Little Miss Size Six wanted to be Little Miss Size Two and found a spell on the internet that promised to help her lose twenty pounds in a weekend. It was really a spell to summon a gluttony demon into the caster’s body, so she was well on her way to eating herself to death by the time her parents called me in.”
“That’s disgusting.”
“That’s not even the disgusting part,” I said.
“No, I mean a fifteen-year-old girl who’s a size six thinking she’s fat. What the hell is this world coming to? I’m a size twelve and I think I look pretty good.”
I dropped my towel and opened the dresser for some boxers. “I’d have to agree, Detective. Looks like everything’s in the right places to me.”
“Oh for God’s sake, Harker!” Flynn exclaimed, covering her eyes.
“What?” I asked, then looked down. “Sorry,” I said. “Raised in Europe, remember? All your American hang-ups about being naked kinda missed me.”
“I thought you grew up in Victorian England?”
“Edwardian, to be precise,” I called out. “I was born in London in November 1896, but by the time I could remember anything, what you call the Victorian period was over and we were much more Continental.”
“But you still didn’t run around flashing people!”
“Meh, it was more of ‘do what you like, just don’t scare the horses.’ We did whatever we liked in private and with close friends, but we were much more reserved in public.”
“Well, as far as you being naked is concerned, let’s keep it a little reserved. We’re not that close friends.”
“What’s wrong, Detective? See something you like?” I turned to her and flexed a little, showing off my abs. It would probably have been more impressive if I had abs, but exercise was never a strong point of mine. When you come by your superhuman strength the old-fashioned way, by having a vampire bite both your parents and muck about with your DNA before you’re even conceived, you don’t sweat the gym membership too much.
Flynn ignored me, so after a few seconds I pulled on a pair of black jeans and a black t-shirt. I sat next to her on the bed, pulled on a pair of socks and started lacing up my Doc Martens. The all-black ensemble was a little pretentious, but since I only owned black jeans, black t-shirts, and black boots, it certainly made dressing for work easier.
“So what’s the deal? I’m pretty sure you didn’t come here just to ogle me as I scrubbed chunks of puke out of my hair,” I asked.
“I think there’s a vampire on the loose in Charlotte,” Flynn said.
“Yeah, his name’s Dracula, but he’d really rather you just call him Luke. Or even Mr. Card.”
“Impossible,” I said, standing up. I dug my phone and wallet out of my pants and tied the towel around the bundle of disgusting clothes. I dropped it onto the tile of the bathroom, figuring at least then it wouldn’t soak into the carpet.
“Why is it impossible?”
“Because my uncle lives here, and he doesn’t like other vampires. He barely tolerates me, and I’m his fault, for Christ’s sake. No way would he let another real vampire run free in Charlotte.” I held up a hand. “And before you even say it, there is also no way a vampire could operate within a hundred miles of here without his knowledge. He knows these things. It’s kinda creepy, but he does.”
“Then either he’s gotten sloppy, or we’ve got something else feeding on humans that looks an awful lot like a vampire.”
“And how do you know what a vampire attack looks like, Detective? If I recall correctly, the veil was lifted for you just a few months ago, and before that you had no idea that the monster under your bed was real.”
“What do you mean, the monster under my bed was real?”
“There are monsters under children’s beds. Or at least, there are a lot of times. They’re little guys, almost completely harmless unless they eat too much. They’re called gurties, and they feed on dreams and imagination. And what better place to find that than in a kid’s bedroom? So they live under the bed, and usually there’s no problem.”
“Usually?”
“Yeah,” I said. “Every once in a while they eat too much, and the kid turns nuts. Did you know having your dreams taken away from you could make you crazy? Well it can, and when it does, I go kill the gurty and the kid goes into therapy.”
“What happens to the kid?” Flynn asked.
“Nothing. I can’t rebuild devoured dreams; once they’re gone, they’re gone. All I can do is make sure the gluttonous little bastard doesn’t do it to anybody else. But you were saying something about a vampire?”
“Yeah, there have been three bodies discovered in the past three nights, all with similar wounds, and all of them completely drained of blood.”
“In populated areas?”
“Nearby. One in the alley between the library and Spirit Square, one in the parking deck across from the Blumenthal Center, and one behind the pizza joint in NoDa.” She named two Uptown locations and one spot in the trendy arts district just north of Uptown.
“Those are way outside Luke’s typical hunting grounds, and besides, he doesn’t drain his victims completely. That’s how…” My voice trailed off. “You said three bodies in three nights?”
“Yeah? Why?”
I was already out of my bedroom and into the living room. I slid my Glock holster onto my belt and grabbed two silver stakes from a wood block in the center of the dining room table. Leave me alone. They’re pretty and when arranged right, look like some kind of funky centerpiece instead of a home defense system. I stopped at the door. “You coming?”
“Where are we going? And what’s got you in such a rush?”
“It takes anywhere from one to three days for a vampire to rise. Vampires are made by completely draining a living victim. If these people really were attacked by a vampire, and if the first victim was found three days ago, then your coroner is in for a surprise right about—”I never finished my sentence. Both our cell phones rang at the same time, with the same Caller ID—Smith.
“You drive,” I said to Flynn as we left my apartment and ran down the stairs. I pulled out my phone and pushed the green button. “Go ahead, Johnny.” John Smith was no more our supervisory agent’s real name than mine was Santa Claus, but I let him have his little illusions.
“Get down here right away, there’s—”
I cut him off for a change. “A vampire outbreak at the morgue. You’ve got three, maybe more, baby vamps that just woke up and are hungry as hell. Have they killed anyone yet?”
“No, the Assistant M.E. saw the bag moving, opened it, and freaked out. He slammed down the quarantine shields quicker than you can say ‘ebola’.”
“Good thinking on his part,” I said. “We’re on our way, be there in five.” I could have run from my place to the Medical Examiner’s office in less than five minutes, but this exercise wasn’t about me, it was about Flynn, so I slid into the passenger seat of her Homeland Security-issued Suburban and buckled my seatbelt.
“How did you know these were vampire attacks, Flynn?” I asked as she put the SUV in drive and screeched out of my parking garage. I was hoping for something easy like pinpricks in the neck, or pale skin, or something that I could rationalize away.
“I don’t. Not really, but what else drains the blood from its victims and leaves the bodies perfectly posed?”
“What do you mean, posed?” I felt a chill run down my spine at her choice of words. I really didn’t want to hear the next few words out of Flynn’s mouth, but I had to.
“All three bodies were left out in the open, where they would be found quickly. And each body was fully dressed, eyes held closed with silver dollars, and their hands folded across their chests.”
“Holding a single red rose?” I asked. My voice was very quiet, but Flynn’s head snapped around to stare at me anyway.
“How did you know that? I didn’t tell you that. Are you doing that see through my eyes thing again?” Her words came out in an angry tumble, and I held up a hand to stop her.
“No, it’s nothing like that. I knew there was a rose because I’ve seen these kills before, and there’s always a rose.”
“Wait, you’ve seen these before? Are you telling me these people were killed by someone you know?”
“Yeah,” I said. “I know who killed those people. And I know what he wants.”
“Who?” Flynn asked. “What does he want?”
“His name is Augustus James Renfield, and he’s here to kill Dracula.”
Chapter 2
“What?” Flynn asked.
“Gus was the first Renfield. He was a good manservant for a long time, and Uncle Luke promised to turn him after his term of service was over. Unfortunately, as the years went by, Luke realized that most people aren’t meant to live forever, so when the time came to turn Gus, Luke refused to do it.
“Gus was batshit crazy, you see. Not the cute kind of crazy they show in the movies where he eats flies, but the fucking scary kind of crazy, where he eats eyeballs. He worked for Uncle Luke for twenty years until he finally went completely around the bend. When Luke fired him, he came calling demanding to be turned. Uncle Luke refused, and Gus stormed off, promising to be back.
“He kept his promise. He came back the very next day, when the sun was up, with stakes. But he didn’t know that I was around, so when he went down to the basement to add a little oak to Luke’s diet, I beat his ass and sent him packing. We thought he died of natural causes until a couple decades later when we ran into him in Vienna. He was snacking on a tenor out back of an opera house when we found him.
“I don’t know where or when he found someone to turn him, but he did. He was a full-on vampire and strong as hell. He beat me to a pulp and went toe to toe with Luke for a couple minutes before he bolted. The next morning we found the tenor on the doorstep of the apartment we were renting, his eyes closed with silver dollars and rose in his hands, folded neatly on his chest.”
“Holy shit” was all Flynn said as she turned into the coroner’s office parking deck. She straddled two compact parking spaces with the Suburban and got out.
I slid out after her. “You just gonna park like a dick?” I asked.
“I’m the government. Anybody doesn’t like it, I’ll send them to Gitmo.” She never broke stride, just walked straight to the elevator and pushed the button.
I got there just as the doors slid open, and I pressed “G.”
“How crazy is this guy?” Flynn asked.
“Makes me look well-adjusted,” I said.
“Fu
ck. Okay, so super-crazy.”
I laughed a little. A very little.
“How strong?”
“I can’t get close to his raw strength. He’s got nothing on Luke, but if he gets me in close quarters and I don’t have anything ready for him, it’s going to be a bad day for me. That reminds me.” I pulled out my cell phone. One bar. I stared at the screen until the elevator doors slid open and I stepped out into the Coroner’s Office lobby. The morgue shared a lobby with about half a dozen other esoteric and often messy government offices, like the pistol permit office, the place where folks buy their garage sale licenses, and the office where they process protests to tax valuation. But the lobby was nice, and I had perfect cell reception.
I pushed one of my speed dials and held the phone to my ear. After three rings, a cultured male voice answered. “Card residence. How many I help you?”
“Ren, it’s me,” I said into the phone.
“Master Quincy, how good to hear from you. Will you be joining us for dinner this Friday? You know your uncle loves to —”
I cut him off. “Ren, I need you to wake Uncle Luke. Follow emergency protocol Pitchforks and get him out of the house. Right now.”
“Master Quincy?” Renfield sounded confused, and I didn’t blame him. We hadn’t used the Pitchfork protocol, named after the final scene in Frankenstein, in years.
“This is not a drill, Ren. My uncle’s safety is in your hands. Execute Pitchfork, right the fuck now.”
“What do I tell him when he asks what the threat is?”
“Tell him it’s your granddad,” I said.
“I’m sorry, Master Quincy, I don’t understand. My grandfather is long deceased and had no quarrel with…” I could almost hear Ren’s eyes go wide as the realization dawned on him.
“Exactly. The first Renfield is in town, he’s killed three people already, and I’d bet dollars to doughnuts that Uncle Luke is the top of his hit list. Now get Luke somewhere safe and gear up for a fight. I’ve got some leads to follow up downtown, then we’ll come collect you and send this rat bastard to Hell where he belongs!”
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