He took a moment to reflect on that, then smirked, “zombies?”
“Well, okay, not that one. That’s an invention that rests solely on Voodoo and George Romero,” Renny laughed. “There are cannibals in the world, but none that I know of that don’t have a pulse.”
“Vampires but not zombies?” he pushed. “Guessing Frankenstein is out too?”
“Oh no, reanimation of the dead is something that’s been experimented with, maybe pulled off once or twice, but never has it been a walking corpse that feasts on human flesh, spreading their existence faster than a dog can eat a chicken leg,” Renny responded. “Vampires are found in multiple cultures stretching back millennia, their descriptions sometimes exaggerated but the same creature nonetheless. Is it really so hard to believe that such a beast could exist, cloaked within the masses of man, feeding off us like a mosquito riding an elephant’s ass?”
“Yes,” he returned and nodded his head for emphasis, “in a digital world of constant surveillance, I find it hard to believe that such a thing could exist without popping up on YouTube or CNN at some point or other.”
“And who says it hasn’t?” Renny returned. “This digital age you speak of, it has one other aspect you seem to be ignoring, computer graphic manipulation. Even if a real vampire were to be caught on video, or in a photo, people would dismiss it as a hoax, as someone’s school project, or a well-engineered CGI manifestation. A vampire could sit on a park bench in the middle of the day, surrounded by people, and feed off a woman’s neck and one,” Renny paused, thrusting a finger up to make a point. “People would turn their heads away and grumble about being intimate in public. Two,” another finger rose, “any blood that did escape from his victim’s neck would be seen as a faked effect for entertainment purposes. They might even drop a dollar or two to help support the street performer’s antics. And three, not a single person would see it for what it truly was. We as a people dismiss out of hand all that we’ve been taught does not exist.”
“I don’t believe that. There are believers in all kinds of phenomena out there, passionate enthusiasts that truly believe in the supernatural. How many people journey into the forests of Oregon in search of the elusive Bigfoot?” he asked, thinking of how many episodes of Unsolved Mysteries he’d watched that featured that very creature.
“And any evidence that they find, any photos or videos that they shoot, how are they received?” Renny asked instead.
“As fabricated hoaxes, because Bigfoot does not exist.”
“Neither, apparently, do vampires, and yet we are on our way to kill one right now,” Renny stated as if it proved all that he’d been saying.
“Are we talking Christopher Lee or Robert Pattinson?” he grinned, trying to crack a joke.
“The closest I believe would be Gary Oldman, but even that one stretched it a bit,” Renny answered seriously.
“Gary Oldman, really?” he ventured. He hadn’t seen that movie in a long time, there’d been a lot of books and movies since its release that muddied the waters a bit between here and there. He’d been in grade school and hadn’t been allowed to watch it until years later when it came up on HBO.
Renny shrugged. “Mostly. They don’t need the Earth of their home soil drug around in crates to lay down in at night. No coffins, no sarcophagus, never known them to sleep in anything but a bed. Hell, I killed one in a waterbed once, that was a mess like you wouldn’t believe. The important thing to remember is, whatever you think you know, just forget it. Treat it like something new, something you have no knowledge of whatsoever and build from there.”
“Was the first vampire Judas Iscariot, risen from the dead as he hung from the tree, the thirty pounds of silver scattered beneath his dangling feet?” he laughed, Gerard Butler’s bearded face coming to mind.
“I wouldn’t know, I wasn’t there. Do you believe in evolution?” Renny asked, veering away from the fictional references.
“Are you going to lecture me about God? Do I need to be a believer to survive against a vampire? If that’s true, then I’m fucked. No cross I hold will have any power over a beast of hell.”
Renny smirked as he shook his head. “Not why I was asking, but we will circle back to that. Vampires are not supernatural creatures, they are genetic mutations of the human genome brought on by natural evolution. They were born of the Dark Ages, when plagues, disease, dysentery, warfare, and world-hunger ran rampant over Mankind, pushing us towards oblivion. They are strong, they are fast, but they are bound by the laws of nature. Due to their biological make up, they burn through their blood quickly and require a fresh infusion, absorbed through their stomach lining, once every six days or they start to wither and experience mental breakdowns and eventually go insane. Which, considering their telepathic capabilities, can raise havoc on any human in the vicinity.”
“Speaking of which,” Renny said, reaching beneath his seat and coming back up with a Rangers ballcap and a Bluetooth. “She won’t care if you’re wearing either of these, at least until she figures out what the cap is doing.”
“She’ll know something’s wrong just by the logo; I am not a Rangers fan.” He held the cap lightly in hand, his hands flexing the brim, eyes on the wires on the inner lining and the small battery hooked under the button on the cap. “This my Magneto helmet? Gonna keep the Professor from controlling my mind?”
Renny nodded, “won’t block everything, but you won’t automatically turn your head to the side and expose your neck just because she bats an eye at you either.”
“Five minutes from the Aquarium,” Ezio announced, the interstate lights flashing past, downtown Houston drawing ever closer. “Hope you’re ready for this. Any last words?”
“Don’t let Ezio give me mouth to mouth if I’m dying, just kill me,” Naomi said, interrupting his unprepared answer; he had thought Ezio was talking to him.
“Fuck Olive Garden!” Ezio roared, Naomi cackling shortly after and slapping his shoulder.
Renny chuckled as well, then said, “someone delete my browser history before Ayana finds it. She’ll summon my spirit from the afterlife just to give me a tongue lashing.”
It was apparently a thing for them, a sendoff before the storm. He could understand that, joking about it made it less dire. “Don’t laugh if I soil myself when I die,” he tossed in.
Ezio paused mid-laugh and shot him a glance, then Renny cracked up and slapped him in the leg. “That’s the spirit. Now, let’s kill us a vamp.”
Chapter 5
I
“On the off-chance that you lose that cap, I can’t tell you shit about what we’re going to do. You’re just going to have to trust us,” Renny told him as he stepped out of the Humvee with an apologetic look on his face. “If she scans your surface thoughts and learns of our plans, we be screwed brother.”
“Well, can’t say that I have ever experienced that before,” he admitted, putting on the hat and looking about the parking lot. “If I concentrate on a single thing hard enough, won’t that keep her from learning anything pertinent?”
“I don’t want you to think of purple elephants,” Renny said, waving a hand at Naomi to signal it’d take a second. “How’s that going?”
There were elephants dancing at the edge of his thoughts. No matter how hard he tried to distract his mind, to push his thoughts in another direction, they kept blundering their way back in.
Renny nodded with understanding, “it’s like a virus. Once it’s in, it’s near impossible to exorcise. You’ll be so busy trying not to think about it, it’ll push right to the top. Just, trust us, we have your back.”
He snorted. “Right, trust people I just met with my life as I venture off to have a meet and greet with a vampire. Rock on. Last time I checked, the fisherman is never concerned with the well-being of the worm he spears on the tip of his hook.”
Renny patted him on the shoulder, “trust is earned, I know that. Just do your best to stay calm and act natural. Just whatever you do, don’t let her
bite you man. This virus they spread, it starts genetically altering your DNA upon initial introduction. Not many turn with just a single bite, but it’s not unheard of either.”
He nodded, “okay. Would feel better about this if I wasn’t going in there empty handed. Even a knife would be better than walking in there with my dick in hand.”
“And I would give you a weapon if I thought you had a shot of hurting her rather than yourself or some innocent bystander. After this is over, if you want to hang around a bit, I might be able to show you a few things before we bounce to our next case. But right now, let’s leave the fighting to the professionals.”
“Dude, we need to park this shit before Naomi carries through with her threats and cuts off one of my testicles,” Ezio said through an open window.
“Oh yeah, real professionals,” he snarked, rolling his eyes. “Go on. Earlier this morning I wished for death, I wanted to join my wife in the afterlife, if there even is one, rather than continue on in this existence without her. I don’t know if I still feel that way, you’ve scared the living shit out of me enough for me to question that, but if something does happen to me, it’s not like I hadn’t already prepared myself for it anyway.”
“You’re not going to die,” Renny told him with confidence. “You’ve got twenty minutes before you’re expected to meet her. I’ll see you on the other side.” With a final glance, the man ducked his head and closed the door of the Humvee, the vehicle surging forward as Ezio hit the gas, leaving him in the parking lot alone and about to meet his death.
He sighed.
Now what?
He could turn and walk away, try to disappear into the shadows and make for a populated street. Though, it was near four in the morning, making it just about the slowest time of day traffic wise. Chances were, he was already being watched; he wouldn’t make it far if she decided to give chase and he’d end up in the morgue anyhow. Or worse, one of those things she’d been turned into.
Vampire.
Still doesn’t sound right.
He turned his eyes upon the building before him, loving memories cascading through his mind and warming his heart. The aquarium was lit by pale blue lighting, the white stone tinted to match, the glow usually soothing to look at, but right now all he could feel was fear. There was a statue of two swordfishes in the nearby pond and he suddenly envisioned himself speared on top of them.
After the funeral where he’d met Amanda, he went home over the moon and didn’t realize he hadn’t even gotten her number until hours later while taking a shower; daydreaming. Cursing himself, he had to try to figure out who she knew, what her connection was to their deceased friend, and try to cold call them the next day to track her down.
Luckily, she had come to the same realization and interrupted his third call with one of her own. She’d rolled the same dice and happened to hit sooner, the effort on her part cementing the connection he’d felt in his mind and making his heart flutter with excitement. She had asked about meeting somewhere but hadn’t wanted to go out to eat or see a movie, as most new couples tended to do when first getting to know one another. She had wanted something completely different and he felt like it was a test, to see if he was worth pursuing or not.
Of all the places he could have chosen, how the aquarium ended up the finals still eluded him to this day. More than likely, it had been a subconscious decision due to his having driven past the place thousands of times on the way to work and having never actually been before. People came from all across the country to visit Houston, to see the sights, and he hadn’t visited even a third of them since moving there twenty-five years before. Hell, even the Space Center was still on his bucket list, and that was just on the other side of town!
She had also insisted that they not meet in the parking lot, or the front of the building for that matter. Instead, she had wanted him to find her at one of the exhibits, like an old-fashioned treasure hunt. It was an odd request from someone he’d only met once before, but considering the feelings she had generated within him, the stirring she had caused in his soul, he’d have done anything just to see her again. Just point him in the right direction and say go.
Surrounded by a manufactured cargo hold of a ship, he had finally spotted his newfound love standing in front of the aquarium at the far end, just past the barrels and sandbags, her blond hair teased up and the light green blouse pulling his eyes immediately in her direction. She had her eyes on a clown fish as he approached, or he’d thought that was what she was staring at. But more likely, it had been his reflection in the glass, as that’s where their eyes met and where he’d lost himself entirely to their love. When he had proposed a couple of years later, he had done it there in front of that glass, the other guests and fish looking on as she exclaimed her approval and hugged him on the spot.
They hadn’t been back since.
It wasn’t like they hadn’t wanted to return, they were just constantly overwhelmed with the life they’d built together, always promising to make the time and never really being able to make it. Well, now it looked like they were finally going to do it, and once more he’d be wandering the interior looking for the strange tantalizing woman that had captured his heart. This time not to propose, but to pray that she didn’t literally tear his heart from his chest and feast upon his lifeforce as it fled his body.
“Think you’ve done enough wool-gathering. You should head in,” Renny’s voice said in his ear.
He had forgotten that he’d put the damned thing in.
“Sorry, just been twelve years since I’ve been here. It took me back to happier times,” he replied. Why did he keep doing that? He was doing their job for them and had no real reason to apologize for anything. Still, it was hard to fight his own nature, always avoiding conflict and trying to soothe things over; make love not war and all such nonsense.
He only wished it was hard on Amanda too, that would make what he was about to do so much easier. He wasn’t on the vampire train yet, but he had bought a ticket and was waiting on the platform for it to arrive. Renny was right, there were only so many explanations available to him, and the simplest explanation tended to be the right one.
No government agency kidnapped his wife, nor aliens for that matter; this was not an episode of X-Files.
He had seen her body in the morgue, had cried hysterically while the coroner and detective stood by and watched him grieve, as if confirming that he indeed had no knowledge of her death beforehand in case their assumptions were false.
It had been her in that coffin, not a body double or some magical clone to fake it. The mole on the left side of her neck had been visible, not something so easily fabricated nor thought of by anyone that didn’t know her intimately.
She hadn’t been buried alive. She would have been trapped in there, unable to get out; no way she clawed her way out of six-feet of dirt without help. He could go visit her grave, but he already knew what he’d find, disturbed earth from where she’d pulled herself free and returned to the land of the living.
That only left the supernatural, or what was deemed as such went he went to bed the night before, before the world around him shattered into the impossible realms of fiction.
Nothing else he could think of short of a super-soldier serum could provide this kind of result. And even though the Red Skull had gone insane from those types of experiments, he was a comic book villain created to be the evil mirror image of Captain America and didn’t explain why she’d gone postal on Hailey’s family.
Walking towards the front entrance and was wary of being exposed, entering a building long after closing and vulnerable to any security officer that called him out for it. What if the police were already on the way? A place like this had to have security, motion sensors, some way of protecting it after the doors were locked, and he was going to what? Just walk in?
The trembling in his hands increased. He folded them together and tried to smooth them out, stroking the back of his palm and fingers in a sooth
ing fashion; he’d never been this nervous in his life. Visions of her barred teeth, the way she had launched herself upon him and held him down, the manipulation of his emotions and thoughts with every word she spoke, it lined up with what those hunters were saying. Denying that did nothing but prolong the inevitable conclusion that they were telling him the truth.
Which meant, he was probably going to die.
Renny could tell him until he was blue in the face that they’d have his back, but he knew that when push came to shove, they’d choose whatever course ended Amanda’s life, even if it meant disregarding his own as collateral damage. Renny himself might not make that call, but Naomi? She’d sacrifice his life in an instant and seeing as Ezio hung on her every word like a lovestruck puppy dog, that left the odds in his disfavor.
Welcome to the seventy-sixth Hunger Games!
Why was he going through with this, why not just make a run for it and take his chances? Why was he pulling on the slightly open door and stepping inside? He knew the answer and it had nothing to do with his welfare or that of his dead wife. No matter what Amanda had become, no matter what might happen to him, the lives of two innocent children hung in the balance, and that was why he was stepping into the darkened interior searching for a supposed vampire and her intended victims. Sure, she might have killed them already, but a twisted part of his imagination told him that it hadn’t happened yet. She would want to parade them in front of him, force him to comply to her will.
Not that she would have a problem overpowering him. She was a vampire, what was he? A tortured soul who had just lost his soulmate and had begged for death in order to join her? That’s all he was, nothing more. No threat to a newbie vampire. Within the next half an hour he was more than likely going to be on the ground, what blood he had left pooling up under his cooling corpse, a horror show for the maintenance man in the morning to discover. He’d be in the ground within days, the same ceremony and fake mourners showing up to pay their respects. He could hear them now, gossiping that it had to be a suicide, that he obviously had been disturbed by his wife’s death and decided to join her. Why else had he broken into the aquarium they’d had their first date in and slit his throat? Just another sad tragedy to be briefly thought of and then forgotten.
The Legacy Series (Book 1): Legacy [Sanguis] Page 7