by C. J. Pinard
I sighed. “You have no idea. Not to mention, it’s more like an acrobatic ability rather than flying. Jumping out of windows, leaping tall buildings in a single bound, that sort of thing.” I grinned at her.
She came around and sat next to me and grabbed my hand, locking eyes with me. She paused as she stared at me, and it began to make me uncomfortable so I looked away. Then she closed her eyes and I relaxed a little. After a minute or two, she opened her eyes again and they were glowing iridescent green. She looked a little alarmed. “I think I know who your father might be.”
I gasped and stared right back at her, and could tell that my eyes, too, were now glowing. “Who?”
“Does the name Vlad Montour mean anything to you?”
I laughed, totally broken by the spell she’d had me under. “Seriously? The monster from folklore and myth?”
She let go of my hand. “Sweetheart, he’s no myth. He’s real, he’s dangerous, and I’m almost positive he’s the one who fathered you.”
I went to speak – to argue – but she cut me off again.
“And if that is true, I wouldn’t look too hard for your mother. There’s no way she survived if she got involved with him in any way.”
I didn’t want to hear any more. I got up and ran out of her shop.
Chapter 2
I wearily slid the key into the lock of my apartment door and slogged inside. I threw my keys and purse onto the dining room table and went into my bedroom to strip off my clothes. The day had been long, and seeing and being around dead bodies always wore me out. You would think after being a cop for 40 years I’d not bat an eye at it, but I still did. After my visit with the psychic – the “seeing faery” – all those years ago, I had decided right then and there that I was gonna help people. If I had to live an extraordinarily long life, and if I possessed this so-called gift, I was going to use it to my advantage.
I’d learned early on that I could heal very quickly. As a child on the playground at school, if I was on the monkey bars and fell off, the cuts and scrapes would be healed and gone by the time I got home from school. My parents –whomever they happened to be at the time – never believed me when I’d tell them I had had an accident at school, or when some bully would punch or hit me. It was always the boys who picked on me, too. I’d developed a reputation as a freak at every school I’d gone to and I guess that scared them. I was and still am sort of clumsy, so when the kids would see my cuts and bruises be gone by the next day, and I couldn’t explain it, they began to distance themselves from me. I began wearing long pants and long-sleeved shirts to school, no matter what the weather.
Shaking the memory from my brain, I concentrated on the here and now. I always wore a fully concealed body strap gun holster under my jacket – ironically named a “Lotus” – and removing it, I tossed it with the gun still tucked safely inside the holster onto my dresser. I stripped off my long-sleeved T-shirt and then reached down to remove the small .22 pistol from my ankle holster and set it on the dresser next to the other. No, it wasn’t police-issued, and no, I wasn’t supposed to have it, but ya know what? Some idiot takes my gun, I have a backup. So fuck the Denver PD and their stupid rules. They can fire me, but at least I’ll still be alive to collect the pink slip.
Not that I was that easy to kill, but still.
As I was about to start the water to the shower, I heard a screeching noise outside my bedroom window. Since I was apparently a “faery of the air” and could fly (if you want to call it that), I had a third-floor apartment in case I needed to make a hasty exit – so hearing a noise outside my window was very alarming. With lightning speed, I snatched a gun from my dresser and walked methodically to the light switch in my bedroom and flipped it off. Then, completely naked, I made my way to the window, stopping my breathing as I pressed my bare back against the wall that was flush to the window. It was cold but I paid it no mind.
The screeching sound came again. With my breath still trapped in my lungs, and with my pistol gripped tightly in my fist, I released the breath, and at supernatural speed, shoved the blinds to the side and pointed my gun at my own reflection in the window. Using my enhanced sight, I could see there was someone – something – flying past my window. A man, a very good-looking creature who was clearly not human – falling fast to the ground. He smirked at me and then waved as he passed, dropping like a stone.
I flung open the window, perched myself on the windowsill, then jumped down three stories, channeling my imaginary wings, and landed on my feet, just like a cat. I ran out into the night and saw the figure running through the woods that backed up to my apartment complex.
Why, oh why did I rent an apartment that backed up to woods?
Cursing under my breath, I went darting after my prey, trudging over leaves as fast as my feet would take me. My mind was twirling with a million thoughts on why this guy had been outside my window, or perhaps creeping around the ledges outside my window. I could barely make out his fleeing outline as he used vampire speed to dart through the trees.
An agonizing pain in the bottom of my foot reminded me that I was an idiot. Naked and obviously barefoot, a huge chunk of green glass was now embedded in the bottom of my right foot. Cursing, I reached down and plucked out the glass and chucked it away. My magic had subsided, along with my adrenaline, and now, judging by the small crowd gathered outside my apartment who were gawking at me, I realized what a stupid move that was. One woman even had her hand over her teen boy’s eyes, her mouth open in shock. Thankfully, I spotted a flattened cardboard box near a dumpster and opened it up, stepped into it so it was covering all the good parts, and tried to muster up the last of my dignity by walking very quickly with my head down into my building. I sprinted up the stairs, holding the box over me. After all, it wasn’t as if I could have jumped back up to my window. That would have garnered more looks and points than my nakedness had.
Exiting the door to my floor, I flung it open and looked both ways down the hallway. Determining the coast was clear, I softly padded down the carpeted hallway to my apartment. As I was about to open my door, grateful but cursing myself for not locking it, the door next to mine opened. I hastened my need to open my door when I heard a chuckle, followed by a soft, throaty, “Rough night?”
Pausing in pure mortification, I turned and saw my neighbor, Drew, bending down to pick up his paper from his front stoop. As he stood back up, he regarded me with amusement all over his ridiculously perfect face. He was in nothing but a pair of athletic shorts and his black hair looked a bit damp. I barely knew him, we had exchanged pleasantries at the mailbox in the lobby a few times, and he offered me a hello when we’d meet in the hallway like this.
“Something like that,” I mumbled shoving open my door and darting inside, slamming in closed, but not before I heard more throaty chuckles coming from his direction. Jerk. Stupid, cute jerk with the dimples and blue eyes. I’m never gonna be able to look at him straight in the eye again.
Damn, what had I been thinking? I hadn’t been, and that was the problem. I jumped first and asked questions later. The problem was, I had heard that screeching sound before a few of times in the past couple weeks, and this was the closest I’d ever gotten to actually confirming my biggest fear – there was another vampire watching me – and I had no idea why.
I hadn’t slept well last night, so today was sucking badly. Straight black coffee that resembled black tar heroin was keeping me company today. But my motivation to find the vampire serial killer kept me awake and alert too.
My stomach rumbled and I looked at the clock on my computer – 12:05 p.m. As I was about to get up and head for the fridge to get the salad I’d brought, I heard my boss calling.
“Smith, Waters, in my office, pronto!”
I sighed and flicked my eyes toward Stephan’s cubicle. His eyes met mine and I lifted a shoulder in a shrug, standing up and jerking my head toward our boss’s office.
“Close the door,” the captain barked, pointing at the
door. Captain John Ehrens was a 50-something guy with a bad blonde comb-over and even tackier suits. Once we were both seated and waiting for instructions, he leaned forward in his chair and looked down at his yellow lined legal pad. “We got another corpse at West Fifth and Bryant, same M.O., another homeless one.” He ripped the yellow sheet from the pad and handed it to Stephan, looking only at him. “Both of you get on it.”
Chauvinistic pig.
I gave my boss the most courteous nod I could muster and walked out behind Waters and to the sedan. I let him drive since I didn’t feel like it anyway and let my brain wander to the killer.
In no time, we had arrived at yet another warehouse, this one more recently abandoned and a bit cleaner than the previous ones. It appeared to have been some kind of parts manufacturer at some point and the machines looked like they were in various arrays of being dismantled, as if the previous owners were breaking them apart and selling them for parts. The floors were still relatively clean but there were no signs of life, not even any rats or cockroaches.
The body had been reported by the previous tenants when they had come in to retrieve more of their belongings. The body, again, was in the corner but it was not propped up, it was lying flat. This time, a female. A very young-looking one at that. I did not detect any strong scents of decay, and as I got closer, I could see she had very recently been killed. I pulled on a pair of rubber gloves from my pocket and laid a hand on her face. It wasn’t warm, but it wasn’t frozen or even stiff. With my enhanced hearing, I did not detect a heartbeat, and judging by her still-open terrified blue eyes, I could tell she was gone. She didn’t look older than nineteen and I had to swallow down a pinch of sadness at seeing someone so young not only homeless, but now dead. Such a horrible statistic.
“Damn, she’s young,” Stephan said, crouching beside me, saying what I was thinking.
I nodded. “I know. Very sad.”
“What’s that?” my partner asked, leaning his head in closer to the body and examining her neck.
Pulling him back, I leaned in for a look. Two very obvious puncture wounds – not even an attempt to hide or try to heal them at all. A vampire’s saliva could be used to heal wounds on humans if applied right away. I used my closeness to inhale deeply. I smelled that same musky, manly cologne I’d smelled on the other bodies, but this time, it was much, much stronger since the body was so fresh. This excited me on so many levels. I inhaled again to commit the scent to memory and then backed off.
“Looks like some kind of snake bite or something,” I mumbled to my partner.
I chanced a glance at him and he was looking at me like I suddenly had a dick growing out of my forehead.
“What?” I asked casually, biting back a smile at the look on his face.
His eyebrows were up near his hairline. “A snake bite? In the winter in Colorado, in the middle of the city?”
“Hey, you never know. I’m beginning to think these are ritual killings of some kind. Devil worshippers love to use snakes and stuff.”
His gaze slid slowly away from mine and then looked at the body, then around the warehouse, then back at me. “Well, where are the candles? The pentagrams etched into the body or around it? Where are the torture marks? These people are just dead. Drained of blood, the M.E. says, and I bet this one, too.”
I rolled my eyes at him. “You watch too many crime dramas. Pentagrams, really?”
He pointed at my neck. “You’re the one with a tattoo of one on your neck. Kinda contradicts those pretty flowers on your arms.”
I yanked the collar of my white blouse up higher over my neck subconsciously and sniffed. “It’s not a tat, it’s a birthmark, I told you before. Now drop it.”
He shook his head and bent over the body again, examining her neck.
I hated this damn birthmark on my neck. It was reddish and sort of star-shaped, admittedly resembling a pentagram – the “Star of David”, a five-pointed star with a circle around it, but it wasn’t perfect. The circle was a bit oval shaped and the star wasn’t perfectly shaped, either, but that happens as a person grows, I guess.
If I had thought I was just a regular human, I would probably have shrugged it off. But finding out I was half vampire and faery, something told me that this “birthmark” was probably something more than that. I’d tried Googling it and even searching at the library in old books about this type of mark, but the closest I could find was where witches had branded some of their people with it, but it was much larger and more perfectly shaped – and these witches were cursed with it for being outcasts. A scarlet letter, if you will.
The cologne smell still lingered in my nose and I had an idea.
“Waters, I’m gonna take a look around this place. I’ll be back in a few.”
He waved me off. CSU had just arrived and he was busy with them.
Spying a set of metal steps in the corner of the warehouse, I walked over and started up them. They went up to the second floor, which was open. I could see the entire first floor from up here. I continued up the metal catwalk and saw a set of doors at the end. I tried one of the doors, but it was locked. Then suddenly, the smell of that cologne became strong. I looked down at the crime scene, at the fresh body – thought about how her puncture wounds were still visible – how she hadn’t been propped up like the others – how she hadn’t been posed there, left to rot.
Oh, my God. The killer was still in here!
My heartbeat sped up and then jumped into my throat. I looked down once more at the crime scene and then back at the door. I pulled my gun out of my body holster, took a deep breath, and raised my boot. Rearing back my leg, I kicked in the door as quickly and as hard as I could and it flew off one of its hinges. It lay half on-half off the doorframe and I raised my Glock in front of me and waved it cautiously around.
The scene in front of me made me gasp. Four makeshift beds on a bare stone floor in an empty room that was probably once an office. The one and only window was open and I flew over to it and looked down. That same blonde undead piece of shit who had been looking in my window was now looking up at me, smiling, then he ran off.
I looked up into the sky. It was heavily gray and threatening rain – or maybe snow, it was hard to tell this time of year – and I yelled in rage. Lucky bastard. If the sun had been out, he’d have been a vampire barbeque. I was about to hop up on the ledge and jump out when Stephan and two other CSU members came running in.
“What is it?” he asked me, but he was looking around the room, along with the others.
“Assholes must have escaped out of the window,” I said, pointing at it.
All three went over and looked down at the two-story drop, then back at me.
“What, they jumped?” one of the crime scene unit guys asked me.
I shrugged one shoulder. “Maybe?”
“I don’t see a rope or anything else,” Stephan said, almost in a challenge.
Saying nothing, I looked out the window.
“C’mon, Garcia, let’s get back to the scene. Hopefully they’ll catch this vampire killer,” one of the CSU guys said.
I whipped my head around and said to their retreating figures, their white CSU suits swishing as they walked. “What did you say, Erick?”
He turned around and said, “We’re calling him the vampire killer. Because of the puncture wounds. I thought I saw some on the other body, too, but I couldn’t be sure. But this body’s fresher. Those are puncture wounds.”
I narrowed my eyes at him. “Yeah, probably made by needles by crazy cultists stealing blood.”
He grinned at me, almost in a knowing way, and then turned around and walked out, followed by his colleague and mine.
Aw, fuck.
Chapter 3
“Another one?” I asked the coroner as I stood next to her at the cold, metal table where the young girl now lay. She was stripped naked, scrubbed clean, and her head was completely shaved.
The coroner nodded behind her white medical mask. She use
d a gloved hand to point at the neck. “Totally drained of blood. She had less than three pints left in her body.”
I shook my head. A human body holds about ten pints, this girl being homeless may have had less to begin with, as sometimes they would donate blood for money, but less than three pints was definitely lethal.
“It’s unfortunate for us both that her body was found so soon, since those are puncture wounds made by fangs, and not needle marks. Of course my report will say they were made by a needle, but those MEs and cops aren’t stupid,” she said.
Maureen Lindt – I called her “Mo” – was a two-hundred-year-old vampire. She worked the night shift here at the coroner’s office, and I could never understand why she wanted to do this job, but I suppose she probably never understood why I wanted to do mine.
“Yeah, they have already dubbed him the ‘Vampire Killer’,” I said.
“Great,” she said dryly. “You need to find this bastard, Lotus. He’s gonna expose us. Not only that, he’s murdering innocent humans. Not cool,” she finished.
I laughed at her slang. Mo was turned probably around 35 years old but was still beautiful and tried to keep up with the times, like I did.
“I know, we’re trying. I may have a lead, but I’m not one hundred percent sure so I’ll let you know if I find anything.”
She nodded, pulling out her bone saw from a metal drawer, removing the blade protector and setting it on her portable metal tray.
I gestured toward the saw. “That’s my cue to leave.”
She laughed. “Why do you think I pulled it out?”
I snorted. “I see how you are.”
“Go find this murderous bastard. Bye, faery girl.”
I frowned. I hated being called that. But Mo loved to give me shit about it. And I let her. I think she was jealous I could go out in the sun. Couldn’t blame her, really. Not being able to would totally blow.
I headed toward the exit.
“Lotus,” she called out as I was about to slide open the heavy morgue exit door.