Vampires Don't Cry: The Collection

by Ian Hall

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 Rage Aftermath

  Chapter 2 No Change

  Chapter 3 Getting into Tomas

  Chapter 4 Clinical Man, just Clinical

  Chapter 5 Down to the Doctors

  Chapter 6 The Biggest Surprise

  Chapter 7 Genesis to Revelations

  Chapter 8 Alucard Medical University

  Chapter 9 The Blood Bank

  Chapter 10 Dozing the Blood Bank

  Chapter 11 Getting Down and Dirty

  Chapter 12 The Invisible Man

  Chapter 13 Judgment Day

  Chapter 14 Election Blues

  Chapter 15 The Invisible Man (Redux)

  Chapter 16 Another Day, Another Dime

  Chapter 17 Retribution at a Price

  Chapter 18 Miranda Rights

  Blood Red Roses (Vampires Don’t Cry: Book 4)

  By Ian Hall & April L. Miller

  When Valérie pulled the handle on the first door, I heard the click.

  OMG. I will carry that sound to my dying bed. If I ever die in a bed. Ha, I’m a vampire; chances are I’ll die when someone sticks a piece of wood between my ribs.

  Oh yes. The click.

  I don’t know where they came from, but my survival instincts took over. I had already turned to my right, looking down the carpeted corridor, when the high-pitched whine started behind the door.

  Vampires can move pretty freaking quick, and I reckon I had taken three, maybe four steps when the door and wall disintegrated, sending shards of wood and metal into the corridor.

  The blast caught me by the waist and threw me like a crumpled piece of paper. I tumbled and bounced from one wall to the next.

  Even before I’d come to rest, the noise hit me.

  Oh man, the sound; a ‘boom’ so loud and hard, it smashed the insides of my ears into a hundred pieces. But it felt so much more than just a ‘noise’; it sounded like an auditory crescendo at so many levels. High frequency squeals and jabs that hurt my sensitive hearing, and low, thundering, earth-shaking tremors that shook the very floor I tumbled over.

  Then silence.

  Well, not exactly quiet. The sound of a million particles coming back down to earth.

  Large pieces of wood, concrete, and glass falling all around me.

  A cloud of dust billowed along the passageway like a lightning fast tsunami wave. Dust containing glass, insulation fiber, and fiery heat. I breathed it all in, and felt it smash my face as I fell.

  I’m not sure when I passed out, but I’m certain I did from time to time.

  From the depths of my subconscious, I heard footfalls. Vampire feet thumping past me, tripping over me, kicking my body. I knew that I rolled to the side of the corridor to safety.

  I lay on my back, and with no ocular focus and little precision, fired my dart gun through the thick smoke into the seething mass of bodies that ran away from me. I reloaded, then fired my second gun.

  I witnessed dart after dart hitting vampire bodies, but the dust and the new bodies hid the result of my work.

  Every dart in my pocket I fired at them. I have no idea how many I hit, but I’m certain I caused a state of confusion in the stairs beyond the smoke.

  Then the fire started.

  A ball of flame, suddenly engulfing the corridor.

  I couldn’t stand, but inched my body backwards on my elbows and heels.

  There’s something intoxicatingly eerie about the sound of a large fire. Flames, with no manmade restriction, no control. That loud sound now assaulted my already-battered eardrums, throwing yellow and orange flickering lights down the corridor.

  With considerable effort, I got to my feet. I staggered away from the flames, conscious that escape lay in the opposite direction. I glanced back down the corridor. The dust seemed to be clearing, and a figure walked through it, walking slowly towards me. I thought I was seeing things, of all the people I had expected to be coming to my aid.

  Miranda.

  Miranda with the tied-back hair, the smirky smile, and the devil eyes.

  “Miranda.” My voice sounded husky and shallow. I shouted, “Miranda!”

  “Mandy?” She came close. Way too close. “Is that you, dear?”

  I looked over her shoulder, then slowly realized that she’d come on her own.

  I stood alone in a burning building with the woman who’d pulled my teeth and my nails from me. The woman who’d offered my bound and naked body to the Helsing workers, just a few months ago.

  The woman on whom I’d planned revenge so often.

  I gripped her by the jacket lapels, turned, and thrust her into the corridor wall. Drywall and wood behind it gave way. I smashed her head into the wall, and I leaned into her till my face lay just an inch from hers.

  “Miranda,” I spat onto her face. “Take a good look around. This where you die.”

  Rage Aftermath

  I have to suppose the aftermath of Hipshaw Farm lasted many hours, but I only had one thought in my mind.

  Mary-Christine.

  And getting her on the first ambulance available.

  By the time the Unicorps vehicles arrived, she seemed to be coming out of sedation. She railed against the gurney straps, flashing her teeth at me and growling like the meanest dog. Five straps to hold her down. I got in the back and waited on Reynolds being brought aboard; he looked in a similar state, way beyond what I’d prepared myself for. There was no sign of Mandy, and to be honest, I was so wrapped up in my own emotions, I didn’t miss her. Looking back I feel guilty for that, but Mary-Christine’s condition was appalling.

  She couldn’t talk, her eyes spent most of their time either raging at me, or high in the sockets, almost lost. Her lips and lower face were swollen to almost double their size, and of course there was the so-recent memory of our tryst. She had wanted to lose her virginity before she died – her words. And now I feared they had been prophetic.

  Frank, it seemed, had not taken the same dose of rage gas. Although he still lay strapped down for safety, his eyes had closed. Unconscious and unresponsive as the ambulance rolled towards Flagstaff, the paramedic pronounced him catatonic.

  I sat back against the uncomfortable seat in the ambulance. It had been a great Helsing victory, but at what price? Half my team lay before me, their fates unknown, and as I had waited for the ambulance, I had seen many Helsing uniforms being covered in camouflage sheets.

  We had taken casualties.

  My phone rang. I reached inside the breast pocket of my uniform. Howard.

  “Mister Weeks.”

  “I just got the news, how is your girl?”

  “Don’t know yet, sir.” I wanted him just to go away, but I felt I owed him a sliver of respect. I mean, we’d just taken down Alan McCartney. “How did we do, sir? What’s the big picture?”

  “Superb, my boy. Superb. By our satellite imaging, it looks like only one got away.”

  I grinned and winced at the same time. “Bald Head?”

  “Yes, do you know him?”

  “Bald Eagle; we thought he was an Indian, you know, Native American. When we had Alan McCartney at the end, he told me that Bald Eagle was the ‘big cheese’; a guy called Tomas Lucescu. Romanian, three hundred years old. You best look him up. He’s the originator of the artwork we sent you.”

  “And all those wonderful ancient Romanian scripts. That ties in perfectly.”

  Mary-Christine snarled again, straining at her bonds.

  “I have to go, sir.”

  “Go for it.” He hung up.

  It’s difficult to whisper sweet nothings when your girlfriend is raging like a demented zombie, but I tried. I think I failed, but I’ll never know.

  We went directly to the airport, and onto a private jet; Howard Weeks’s personal plane. The plane sat for a few minutes, then Roni Muscat came onboard. She looked terrible before she got onboard, but when she saw Mary-Christine’s condition, she collapsed completely. I put my arm around her and led her to a seat. I sat op
posite, across a small wooden table.

  A lot of the airplane was open plan anyway, but when we’d strapped four ambulance gurneys to tables, I thought we were full.

  Wrong.

  One more patient was wheeled aboard. Chris McDonald, closely followed by a very tired-looking Mandy.

  “What’s she doing here?” Roni hissed, her arms poised to rise.

  “Cornerstone of the whole operation,” I said, as Mandy and I exchanged wry grins. “Without her, we’d never have done it.”

  “Captain speaking,” His voice came crystal clear over the loudspeakers. “Please take your seats and fasten seatbelts for immediate take-off.”

  Mandy came across and pointed at the empty seat beside me. “Vacant?”

  “Oh, yes.” I looked across at Roni, almost begging her to complain. I patted the seat beside me. Roni frowned and looked out the small round window as Mandy sat down.

  “I think there’s one thing you should know, Roni.” I reached over the table, and took her hand. “Look at me!”

  She turned, her body trembling. She seemed to be biting half her lip.

  “When the bullets were flying, and the rage gas was falling, Mary-Christine did a very stupid, but very brave thing.” I held her hand tightly, keeping her attention. “Reynolds was attacked by one their rage-induced dogs. Mary-Christine took off her own gas-mask to give him mouth-to-mouth. But right away she got hit by a gas canister – enraged in seconds.” I swallowed slightly. “I knew I had to do something, Roni. So I hit her with a coagulant dart. I did it to save her life.”

  She pulled her hand away.

  “Wait, there’s more. In the middle of the muck and bullets, Mandy forgot about her own safety and lifted your daughter out of harm’s way. She probably saved her life.”

  I could see her struggling with the information I’d just given her.

  “We lost people out there, Roni. I counted at least five dead.”

  Her eyes were full of tears, but she managed to look Mandy in the face. “Thank you.”

  Mandy, to her credit, didn’t exacerbate the situation. She just nodded.

  Roni laughed. Just a little, but she laughed. “I never thought I’d ever say anything to a vampire, never mind ‘thank you’.”

  “Times change,” I said, and braced myself for the sudden rush along the runway.

  Weeks called it a victory. Initially, it seemed difficult to look at it that way when the people closest in my life lay on gurneys in various degrees of brokenness. At least Alan McCartney was now nothing more than a pile of dust on a barn floor.

  Okay – yeah; I’d call that a victory.

  I’d caught Lyman’s little lie but didn’t call him on it. He’d told the Muscat mom that he’d been the one who darted her daughter instead of me. I guess he figured she’d take it better, see it more as the act of mercy if he’d done it. Whatever the old lady needed in order to cope was fine by me. It was becoming apparent that the Muscat women seemed to believe anything that happened in life only happened strictly to them. Never mind the fact that people died today, people were crushed under a trampling horse, mauled by vicious dogs; poor Mama Muscat had to say “thank you” to a vampire.

  The plane ride seemed to take days. A slow, tedious journey with the drone of the engines pressing against my ears and the vinegar smell of Helsings in close proximity. Man, I’d spent waaay too much time dealing with that sour stench over the last few days. I’d have given just about anything to escape it for a few minutes, breathe clear, vinegar-free air.

  It wasn’t to be. We landed at a private airstrip and the wounded were immediately loaded into small helicopters, two patients per, to continue directly to the Helsing medical facility in nearby Chicago.

  I followed Chris’s gurney to his chopper; it didn’t escape my notice that he was being taken separately, apart from the Helsing patients. A large man in scrubs stepped in front of me. I didn’t know him, but somehow he knew me.

  “Sorry, Miss Cross,” he said. “Only the wounded; you’ll have to ride on the ground with the others.”

  He pointed to a small fleet of some white minivan-looking things.

  With the blades whipping overhead, I had to shout my protest, “All the others have already been loaded… there’s room for one more person here!”

  “Sorry, Miss Cross. No exceptions.”

  The man in the scrubs pulled himself into the chopper and it lifted up in a straight line above me. I crouched, head shielded in my arms, and watched the giant metal bird shrink off into the distance.

  “C’mon!” Lyman called out, waving me over to the van.

  I bit my lip and clenched my jaws the whole ride over. Despite the fact that I’d just marched into battle on their side, delivered the death blow to Alan McCartney with my own hands, and whatever else I may have done – I’d never put it past those Helsings to pull a fast one and conveniently “dispose” of Chris as soon as I had my back turned.

  Once we’d arrived at the Unicorps facility in Chicago, Lyman and I went our separate ways; him and Mrs. Muscat were all about Mary-Christine. Naturally.

  I watched every gurney as it wheeled past me. Mary-Christine, cursing and thrashing. Frank Reynolds, eyes staring up blankly to the ceiling. Good old Hideo, diagnosed with a crushed pelvis. After them came ten more Helsings I couldn’t name. Just as I’d expected, Chris seemed to be missing.

  “Miss Cross.” I spun to find Howard Weeks behind me. He placed his hands on my shoulders, smiling broadly. “We are forever in your debt for your actions today, Miss Cross. How could I ever begin to thank you?”

  “You can start by telling me where they’ve brought Chris McDonald.”

  My words came out harsher than intended. I could tell Weeks had been taken aback, our bonding moment ruined. I knew if I wanted his cooperation, I’d have to do a quick fix.

  “I’m sorry,” those words tasted like bile. “He’s pretty important to me; I’m just worried about him. Could you please take me to wherever he is?”

  To Weeks’s credit, he recovered his usual aplomb immediately. “I’m afraid I don’t know right at the moment, Miss Cross. Unfortunately, we suffered greater casualties than anticipated; I think we’re all caught a bit off guard. I’m sure once the initial commotion subsides, we’ll be able to locate your friend.”

  With no further ado, Weeks took off down the hall in Lyman’s direction.

  I didn’t sit still for a second. Poking my head up to every window of every room, I jogged each hall of the medical center. No Chris. NO CHRIS.

  A hurricane of a tantrum brewed inside me. With nowhere to direct the energy, and unable to relax, I refocused my search from Chris to Frank Reynolds. Mary-Christine was covered and nobody would miss me there anyway. Reynolds, made a chew toy for some rage-pumped hound, fought his fight all alone. I went to him.

  Without bothering to pander for permission, I let myself into his room but stayed at a respectable distance so as not to interfere with the medical team. There were three of them. One delivering general anesthetic through a mask, a female setting instruments on a tray – supposedly the nurse. She was sporting a tight, black ponytail.

  The third, another woman, and most likely the doctor, was scrubbing up at a sink. Nobody had yet noticed me when the doctor turned around and stopped short with a small gasp. A pair of thickly painted eyes stared up at me from behind a surgical mask.

  “Miranda.”

  Of all the places to find Mandy Cross, a corner table in the Unicorps cafeteria at 3 a.m. seemed strange. She looked withdrawn, tired; almost unresponsive. “Seat taken?” I asked. She blinked a few times on raising her head. She’d been miles away, or asleep, or something.

  “You find Chris yet?”

  She shook her head.

  “We’ll find him. I just gotta eat something.” Her condition caused me some concern. “How about you? You fed lately?”

  She shook her head.

  With one of my chicken salad sandwiches in my hand, I set off in
the direction of the medical center. It took two questions and one request, and I sat back at the table in five minutes with a bag of blood.

  Mandy drank slowly. Not like her. “Not my favorite brand.”

  I shook my head in a sneer. “Yeah, like you know the difference.”

  “Type AB, and it’s old.” She made a ‘told-you-so’ face at me.

  “Whatever.” I took another large bite. “What’s up, Mandy? This isn’t just about Chris. You’re fermenting something else in there; I can tell.”

  “Don’t presume to know me, Lyman Bracks.” I felt a little perplexed, but at least she looked animated. “You don’t know me.”

  Her normal tough exterior seemed to be building again.

  “Jackson Cole knew you,” I said, hoping for some reaction. Anything at all.

  Her eyes narrowed. “Things have been a bit hectic lately.” She turned to face me, the tube of blood, just an inch from her lips. “What made you think of Jackson?”

  Glad to have her attention, I leant forward on the white Formica table. “I’ve been thinking of him a lot lately. Especially when we were training.”

  “Up on the farm.”

  “Yeah.”

  She leant forward. Our heads were now close in deep conspiracy mode. “Up where I buried him.”

  “What?” That had surprised me.

  “I buried Jackson Cole about three miles from that farmhouse where we trained.”

  “How is that even possible?” I asked. “How did you get him there?” I was thinking dust and bones in plastic grocery sacks, something like that.

  Mandy’s turn to look perplexed. “I carried him. Why?”

  “Eh, Jackson Cole was turned in the late fifties, right?”

  She nodded. “Late fifties, early sixties. Something like that.”

  “So how did his body not turn to dust when he died?”

  Mandy stopped with her mouth half-open. “I don’t know,” she said eventually.

  “The Forrester Effect. Why did it not kick in for Jackson?”

  We sat for a moment in silence, then she looked around, making certain we sat alone. Mandy surprised me with an abrupt change of subject.