‘You mean they’re no more dangerous than any vampire.’
‘Probably less so. They can’t afford to get hurt as much as the rest of us.’
There was a man sitting outside a busted down door on the river side of the building. He looked like your typical itinerant, with a thick, if tattered, coat and a hoodie pulled up over his head. But the smell hit Mike’s nose a few yards away and his stomach rebelled almost immediately. The man looked up at them as they approached and Mike saw his face: you could see bone through the skin of his left cheek and his left eye was cloudy. He nodded to Dione but said nothing as she walked past. Mike held his breath and followed.
Inside, down a short corridor, they found Caliban and his cronies. They had set up shop in an open-plan office, maybe twenty of them sitting around the walls. In the middle of the room was an oil drum with a fire burning in it. Thick smoke billowed out, some of it leaking away through a hole in the ceiling, but a lot backing up into the room. Mike coughed and tried to focus watering eyes on the figure beyond the fire.
Caliban was, maybe, seven feet in height and heavily built with a rock-solid jawline, a broad nose, and black skin which did not look quite right. He did not seem to have the disfigurements of his companions, but his skin had a grey undertone. Necros vampires were unique in that they did not heal the way other vampires did. Directly drinking blood could repair damage, but if a wound was left too long, it would never fully heal up. Caliban had obviously been lucky, or skilled, but his affliction was catching up with him in other ways.
‘Aphrodite’s paps, Caliban,’ Dione said, waving her hand in front of her face, ‘what are you burning? Old socks?’
‘The fire is for your new partner, Hunter,’ Caliban replied. His voice was quite rich, but there was a rasp to it which jarred on the ear. ‘And we thought the smoke might mask the smell from us. Maybe.’
Dione walked around the fire to where Caliban was sitting on the only chair in the room. ‘I haven’t thrown up in front of a necros since the fourth century. I’m not going to start now. What can we do for the King of the Outcasts?’
‘Straight to business then? All right. First, and I know you’ll give me a straight answer, the Concilium hasn’t taken it upon themselves to rid the city of my people, has it?’
‘If they have, they haven’t told me. Which means Leo doesn’t know about it either.’
‘I thought as much. Then there’s a problem and it won’t stay isolated to the necroi forever. We’ve had four go missing in the last ten days. Now, a couple of them I would say could have wandered off to pastures new, but the other two were New York vampires down to the bone. No one’s seen them for days. Someone’s ended them, Hunter, and disposed of what’s left of their bodies.’
Dione frowned. ‘You think there’s a sanguinem venator in the city?’ She held up a finger to let Caliban know she needed a pause. ‘Sorry, new partner and I’m spouting Latin. A vampire hunter, literally a blood hunter. That’s a human one.’
‘A vigilante, basically,’ Mike said.
‘Not far off. Oh, Caliban, this is Mike Williams. I’d appreciate it if you told your people about him. They’re harder to get to than the more conventional vampires.’
Caliban nodded. ‘I will, and I’m not saying it’s a certainty, but I’d appreciate it if you would look into it. The four that went missing spent a lot of time in Central Park.’
Dione gave a grunt of displeasure. ‘If this guy is hunting around there, he could come across all sorts. Pardon me for saying, but necroi are an obvious target. If he starts on the other lineages, he’s going to end up killing a human.’
‘Maybe. Maybe he kills one or two homeless with skin conditions too.’
Dione gave him a sour look. ‘That won’t bother people half as much as it should. You keep yourself safe, Caliban. We’re going to get out of here before Mike does irreparable damage to his lungs.’
They walked out to the sound of rasping laughter. Mike waited until they were clear of the building before saying, ‘Now I know what a smoked salmon feels like.’
‘Well, he was trying. Necroi are a bit of a grey area. They pay lip service to the Concilium, but they aren’t really governed by it. Particularly the population regulations. They mostly prey on a part of society that no one really bothers looking at, the homeless. They keep themselves to themselves, because they have to. They pretty much police themselves too. Caliban will personally end one of his people if they risk exposing us. But they were consulted on the Agreement and they fell in line with Concilium thinking on the matter and we look after their interests when they let us.’
‘How old is Caliban?’
‘Not sure. He’s past the two century mark. A vampire’s smell changes as they get older and he’s at least two hundred, probably not much more.’
‘The smell changes because there’s more… decay, for want of a better word?’
‘Actually, older vampires smell too clean. Bacteria won’t grow on us. We’re dead. Necroi smell because of the way the virus works in them. The rest of us smell wrong because we don’t have the natural bugs that every human lives with constantly. That’s where the thing with animals hating us comes in, but that’s a learned behaviour. Even humans can detect it, but they’re just bad at it.’
‘Huh. So what do we do about this… other hunter?’
‘We see if we can track him down and put a stop to it.’
‘Kill him?’
‘Not unless we have to. He’s a human so he’s subject to human laws. If he’s caught, he’ll probably be declared insane and locked up.’
‘Well, I guess if you’re going to run around thinking vampires are real, you have to be nuts, right?’
‘No comment.’
22nd December.
‘I’m just saying,’ Dione said, ‘that I have no idea what to get Leanne. I found something I think your mother will like, but Leanne…’
‘You don’t have to get her anything,’ Mike said. He was doing his best to keep up with her long stride as they marched across the grass in Central Park. ‘You don’t have to get any of us anything. The idea was for Mom to meet you, my new partner, not to get more presents.’
‘It just seems rude to turn up without.’
‘It sounds like you’re trying to come up with excuses.’
‘I am not. I just… Huh. Well, I did think of something for Leanne, but it’s not really appropriate and it’d probably make matters worse.’
‘Lingerie?’
Dione frowned. ‘Yes. How did you guess that so easily?’
‘I’m struggling over whether to get her something in that line myself. I mean, when in a relationship, do you get to buy skimpy undergarments for your girlfriend? I don’t know these things!’
Dione stopped and turned to face him. ‘You’ve never bought her so much as a pair of panties?’
‘No,’ Mike replied, rather defensively.
‘You’re thinking about moving in together, Mike. I think you’re allowed. You know her sizes, right?’
‘Thirty-B, thirty-eight inch hips.’
‘More than most men can manage. Get her something.’ Dione began walking again, heading for the lights and the crowd of cops ahead of them.
Mike ran a pace to follow. ‘Uh, out of interest–’
‘Thirty-D,’ Dione said before he could finish. ‘Thirty-seven in the hips, twenty-four-inch waist. Oh, and a thirty-four-inch inseam.’
‘Oh.’
‘They’re big, but not freakish. My legs are almost unfashionably long and it’s a real bitch getting the right size. Now, mind on the job.’
Mike scowled. ‘How am I going to manage that?’
Dione decided that the scene in front of them would likely do the job. ‘Detective Oliver,’ she said, identifying a pretty woman in a suit which did not quite fit perfectly as the likely lead on the investigation, ‘what do we have?’
What they had, obviously, was two victims, male and female. Both had been beheaded b
y someone who did not seem to know what they were doing. The wounds looked like it had taken several blows in each case. But that was not really the weird thing about the murders.
‘What we’ve got,’ Oliver said, ‘is a weird one. I mean, freaky weird. Right up your alley, Diana.’
‘Well, the outfits are certainly a bit odd,’ Mike said.
Both victims were now lying on their backs in body bags, set side by side, their heads resting where they should have been if they were attached. The scene had been documented and the ME had come in to examine them, and only then had SCU been called. The male was young, younger than Mike, and dressed in a black frock-coat, knee-length pantaloons, white stockings, and shoes with a buckle mounted on them. The girl was in what was best described as a white, lacy gown with a low bodice.
‘Cosplayers,’ Dione said. ‘It was the Winter Solstice just after eleven last night. What was the time of death?’
‘Around eleven,’ Oliver replied. ‘We have a witness who heard screams about then. They called it in. But there is one thing which is… weirder.’ Bending down with a gloved hand, Oliver tilted the boy’s head back and pressed his jaw open. He had fangs: long canines which glinted in the lights the cops had brought in.
Mike frowned. He had got no sensation of vampire from the bodies, but then the same had been true with Delvalle. Maybe it only worked with live ones. Or unlive ones anyway.
‘Cosplayers,’ Dione said again. ‘Do you have a pair of gloves I can use?’
‘In my kit,’ Oliver said, waving to a box lying nearby.
Dione pulled a pair of latex gloves from the box, pulled them on with expert ease, and knelt down beside the body. Taking a light grip on his temples, she reached into his mouth and pulled. Then she held up a pair of fangs attached to a row of incisors. ‘Plastic. Not cheap ones, but not even proper veneers. These two were out playing vampire and damsel in distress for Midwinter, and someone thought it was real.’
Mike had pulled gloves from his own pocket and was checking the girl. ‘She doesn’t have them. Why kill her? I mean, why kill her the same way?’
‘Which was,’ Oliver put in, ‘a stab through the heart using a thin, square-sectioned blade prior to hacking their head off. ME thinks maybe a machete for the chopping, but he’s not sure about the sticker.’
‘Maybe a foil,’ Dione said. ‘A fencing weapon. Some daggers designed to go through chinks in armour had a square sort of cross-section. As for why her too… Either he was being cautious or he saw them necking and assumed she would turn. Vampire lore tends to be unclear on the process.’
‘So they died because they were pretending to be those kids from the vampire movies?’ Oliver asked.
‘I think this is more Anne Rice or Hammer Horror. Period outfits. She’s definitely trying for Ingrid Pitt.’ Dione got to her feet and stripped off her gloves. ‘You don’t need us for this one, Bea. What you’ve got here is a straight-up nut who’s murdered a young couple because he believes in vampires.’
‘Or someone who knew them,’ Mike said, ‘and wanted to throw the police off.’
‘Good point,’ Dione agreed.
‘Okay,’ Oliver said. ‘I can work with that. Thanks for your time.’
‘The other hunter?’ Mike asked as they walked back to Dione’s car.
‘Almost certainly,’ Dione replied.
‘And we’re just going to leave it?’
‘Mary will keep an eye on the case. Bea Oliver is a capable investigator and this is, technically, a mundane case. He screwed up doing this. Now he’ll have the cops hunting him and the press will paint him as a madman. Better yet, I know the type and making a mistake will shake his convictions. He’ll stress about killing innocent people. Sanguinem venatores are usually religious and this is a bad time of year to be screwing up in the name of God. He’ll likely vanish until after Epiphany to purify himself.’
‘Okay. Would that work? The stabbing through the heart thing?’
‘If he’s doing it because he knows what he’s doing, yes. It’s actually a fairly clever technique. We can… hibernate. Shut down our bodies to conserve energy. It happens automatically if we’ve depleted our reservoir of live blood, or if our hearts are pierced by something. We can fight it off, keep going, but it’s hard. So if you put a stake through a vampire’s heart, which is no mean feat, they will appear to be dead. Chop their head off while they’re down and you end them. But you have to leave the stake, or spike, in the heart or they’ll be up in a second or two and pissed off.’
‘So he’d need two of them. The daggers, or whatever he used. One for each of them. And he has to have learned where to stick them. You’re right, hitting the heart isn’t easy unless you know what you’re doing.’
‘Yes… I’ll get Mary to contact some of the other Concilium Hunters. Maybe this guy’s hit elsewhere before coming here. Maybe we can even find out who he is and where he came from.’ Dione flashed Mike a grin. ‘You see, this is why I like having a human partner. You think of things I don’t.’
Mike grinned back. ‘Glad to be of service. Now, maybe you could help me pick out some lingerie for Leanne…’
Dione chuckled. ‘If I pick something out, you’ll be too embarrassed to give it to her.’
25th December.
Christmas at the Williams household began on Christmas Eve when Mike and Leanne arrived. Both had managed to secure Christmas Day off. Leanne was on call on Boxing Day and might have to go in, was expecting to have to, in fact. There had been no sign of the other hunter since the solstice, and nothing else had come up, but Mike made sure his mother and girlfriend knew that he might have to rush out at any time; it was just that Dione had said she would handle things herself unless she really needed him. So the family settled in for the seasonal celebrations in the belief that nothing was going to disturb them.
Whenever Mike and Leanne stayed over, they slept in separate rooms. The house had a master bedroom, a slightly smaller guest bedroom, and Mike’s room which, despite being the smallest, was the one he preferred and he had never changed the arrangement. The sleeping arrangements generally made Georgina roll her eyes, but the children would play at propriety so she let them get on with it.
Christmas morning dawned bright, if a little cold. Georgina was up early, starting to prepare the food and ignoring Mike sneaking into Leanne’s bed to cuddle. She knew they did it, just as she was quite sure they never let themselves go further than kissing in case she heard, but Leanne always came down looking a little more mussed than she might, still in the strappy T-shirt and shorts she wore to bed. Georgina recognised the little sparkle in her adopted daughter’s eyes and was happy to see her happy.
Mike always dressed before emerging. This was partially to give a gap between Leanne coming down the stairs and him arriving, but also because he preferred to be fully clothed around the house, as had his father. Once they were all down, there was breakfast, not a large one because everyone was saving space for the dinner coming later, but enough to get them through the opening of presents.
There was always a tree. Mike got it the week before Christmas, Georgina decorated it, and the presents were placed under it, sorted by recipient, the night before. This year there were four piles, though one of those was significantly smaller than the others.
‘You said she would arrive around one?’ Georgina asked as they all looked at the piles.
‘She visits Mary and Doctor Winthrop on Christmas morning,’ Mike said. ‘I think she was visiting Pat last night, so it might be a slow start.’ The comment was meant to suggest alcohol would slow Dione down, but Mike had been told the basics about the relationship between Dione, Pat, and Lisa, and he was moderately sure that, since all three were meeting up, it would be physical exhaustion that was the problem.
‘Well, she can open hers later then. Let’s get started.’
There were the standards: Mike always bought his mother a bottle of vodka, because she liked it and refused to buy it herself, and Georgin
a always bought Mike socks and Leanne panties, because she said you could never have too many of either. There were the jokes: Mike got a bobble-head Dracula figure from Leanne which had Georgina giggling. Mike was not entirely sure how Dione was going to react to it, though he suspected there would be more giggling. There was the embarrassment of Leanne opening up a flat box to discover a black, lacy, thong-backed teddy. Neither was sure who was more embarrassed given that Georgina was saying how lovely it was and how she thought Leanne would look wonderful in it.
And then there was the book. When everyone had finished with presents, leaving Dione’s waiting, there was one left, a thick block perhaps twelve by nineteen inches and three inches thick.
‘That is for you, Mike,’ Georgina said. ‘It’s not bought, so I think it counts as an extra. It’s just been gathering dust here and I think it might be interesting to you.’
Frowning, Mike undid the wrapping paper and found himself looking at a leather-bound folio book with no indication on the cover of what it might be. Rather carefully, he opened the cover and looked at the text on the first page. ‘It’s in Polish.’
‘Yes, you were quite good at that once.’
‘Huh… Myths of the… Slavs?’
Georgina smiled. ‘Very good. Even if the text is difficult to understand, the illustrations are quite beautiful. It was your grandfather’s, my father’s. I believe his grandfather gave it to him when he was quite young.’
Mike flipped over a few pages and Leanne gasped. ‘Oh, that is beautiful,’ she said, though exactly what the carefully painted picture was showing was another matter. It appeared to be a beautiful young woman, somewhat willowy, with long, red hair. She was up to her waist in water and appeared to be quite naked, her arms reaching out to beckon the viewer closer.
‘Rusalka,’ Mike said, reading the text beneath the plate.
‘They were a vengeful spirit,’ Georgina said, ‘in some ways like a mermaid. They would lure young men to their deaths, drowning them in a river.’
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