Vampires Don't Cry: The Collection

by Ian Hall

  I had done reconnaissance into the Dean’s office.

  Killed my girlfriend.

  Dosed the blood bank.

  Killed Angela McCartney.

  Helped kill twenty-five on Election Day.

  Helped kill four, captured one at the Grand Canyon.

  Now I’d graduated to Căluşari Ninja.

  All in a week. In fact, all in four days.

  Finch nudged me back to the present. “You okay?”

  I managed a smile, though there wasn’t much behind it. “Yeah, it’s been a long week, that’s all.”

  “I know. How’s Mandy doing?”

  Again I smiled. “She’s taking it in her stride. I think we’ll be both glad when the weekend comes. I need a break.”

  “Me, too.” And she walked off, leaving me wondering what the conversation had actually been about.

  The vans were soon on the now-familiar road to Phoenix. With this being the last foreseeable mission, I felt excited. Up for it. Pumped.

  We drove into the red sunset, the light shining into the back of the van. It made for a weird set of faces. Grim. Resolute.

  I had two Căluşari blades on a belt on the floor at my feet. My own Bãtrane daggers, presented by Finch.

  I had radio in my ear. No more getting separated.

  I felt like we were more prepared than ever before.

  I felt ready for anything.

  Wednesday evening; heading down to Phoenix. Surely there had to be a song about that somewhere. Somewhere in my mom’s country repertoire.

  Heading down to Phoenix, dart gun in my belt… looking for some vampires… whatever.

  Wednesday evening.

  Thursday recover.

  Friday gone.

  Greyhound bus.

  Now I knew there had been lots of songs about them.

  Going to somewhere warm. Somewhere I didn’t have to kill to survive. Alan had warned against a solo-vampire existence, but Jackson had done it, not that I considered I’d not drink blood; that seemed a dumb idea.

  But Jackson had stayed alive for forty years on his own. I could do the same. Right now, just forty days seemed like a lifetime.

  Miranda sat up front, but I could see her side through the open cab.

  Maybe I’d take her with me. Maybe she’d relive those nerve-ripping moments all over again, but from her perspective this time, obviously.

  Same plan as before, we laid up just north of the city until dark, and drove in at eight forty-five. Sharp.

  Radios crackled with reports of no rooftop sightings, minimal movement, no strange behavior; all the stuff you’d want to hear if you were going to invade a small country.

  I checked my dart guns for the umpteenth time, and patted my two front pockets, my dart magazines in place.

  The driver turned the engine off, and the sounds of Phoenix at night drifted through the partially open windows.

  Parked outside the campus on the north side, it would be our job to take on the building called Alucard West; a tall, six-story student accommodation block. Lyman’s team would assault the eastern dorm, a mirror image, just half a mile away on the other side of the campus.

  “Radio check.” The driver turned around to us, pointing to Valérie.

  “Mandy?”

  “Clear as a bell.” I clicked to Lyman’s circuit. “Lyman?”

  “Got ya.”

  “Clear.” Finch’s voice.

  We then checked communication with the van, and heard our own voices milliseconds after we’d spoken. We seemed all set to go.

  We waited the clock. And Lyman and Finch’s first part.

  It seemed we waited ages, then a small tap from the back of the van.

  “It’s me.” Finch. I opened it and a bunch of keys got tossed inside. “Have fun.”

  Valérie picked up the keychain. Maybe sixteen keys on it, mostly the standard door size.

  “This lets us inside,” she said with a grin.

  First, however, we had to clear anything from the ground level.

  Valérie clicked me invisible, and we opened the door.

  Yellow sodium lighting gave the campus grass and foliage a strange glow, and as we jumped to the ground, I remembered this would be my last mission. I pumped the air in triumph, and gave a huge smile.

  Miranda showed her face at the van door. “Looks quiet enough.”

  The thought of just sticking her there and then proved quite intriguing. I just didn’t like the idea of a whole life of being invisible on the run.

  “You scout right, I’ll take left.” Valérie’s voice sounded close, and in my earpiece. “We’ll rendezvous at the main door to the dorm.”

  “Got it.”

  With a spring in my step, which had been missing for many days, I set off into the sodium darkness.

  Retribution at a Price

  For the first time in three visits, we used little finesse at the main building.

  “Yours is left,” Finch said softly. “One, Two, Three.”

  I squeezed my trigger on ‘Three.’ Two security guards, both vampires, shot from six feet away.

  Two vampires that Finch made invisible.

  I sat on mine until Finch returned from depositing hers, then met her outside. Both had been burly guys in their thirties, no way I could have taken one on my own. So Finch took mine to the van, then sped off to Mandy’s van with a set of keys from the security guards. Hopefully somewhere on that key ring was a master for the apartments. Personally, I didn’t want to wait for Finch to pick every lock.

  Finch then did a quick sweep of the admin internals; nothing more.

  “Alucard East,” I said as we walked back to the main door. Amazingly, we now seemed to walk in sync, the radios had made the difference. I felt safer.

  The dorm building looked quiet enough, but three vampires sat outside in a covered smoking area. Almost gazebo like.

  “I’ll scout first,” Finch said, and set off. I could hear her diminishing footfalls.

  The vampires just sat there, not doing much chatting. Not doing much of anything.

  “We’ve got a problem,” Finch, loud in my ear.

  I looked around. “What’s up?”

  “There’s a green glow. It could just be transformer neons, but I’m going to check it out.”

  “Be careful.”

  A moment passed. It seemed like a long one.

  “Eh, Lyman,” the voice crackled in my ear. “Don’t appear alarmed. Just turn casually and walk away from the building.”

  “Okay.” I really wanted to reply with ‘roger’, but felt stupid about starting it. I walked out towards the admin again.

  She seemed to be gone for some time. Unfortunately being invisible meant that you had almost no way to track time. I was starting to get a little antsy when Finch returned in my ear.

  “Okay, green glow deactivated. Meet me back where we started.”

  “Outside Alucard East?”

  “Yes.”

  So I trotted back. “What was going on?”

  “Two snipers, heat-sensing goggles, I’ve taken care of them.”

  “We should warn Mandy.”

  “Already done.”

  Sometimes with the Ninja Sisters, I just felt so inadequate. “So these three were the bait?” I now stood no more than fifty feet away from the vamps outside the dorm building.

  “Looks that way.”

  “So they are expecting us.”

  “Yup.”

  “This was a trap.” I almost swallowed, I didn’t feel good. “How are we going to do the three vamps?”

  “Căluşari style.” I could almost see the smile in her words. Oh, that gave me a buzz. “Remember, both blades through the heart. If you think you’ve missed, wiggle the blades, or dart them from close range. You take the one with the hat.”

  “Okay. How do we time this?”

  “Get close. Maybe ten feet away.”

  It took less than a few seconds. The three sat in an open-sided gazebo-ty
pe thing. They looked almost asleep, which I hoped had been the double-doped blood.

  “I’ll whisper a count to five, then we advance and you strike at ten.”

  “Okay,” I whispered.

  “One, two, three, four, five…”

  I stepped forward, raising the daggers like a bird getting ready to fly.

  Ten.

  I’d never stabbed a person with two blades before, and although I hit him hard, I didn’t anticipate the initial resistance to the blades’ entry. He twisted on me, turning to see his assailant, and I used the second to push my blades home. Low moans from Finch’s two did not distract me as I forced the blades in to the hilt. Slowly, his eyes closed, and he fell limp, my Bãtranes holding him up.

  “Lyman?”

  “Done.”

  Finch disappeared all the bodies, then took them back to the van, one by one.

  We were ready to assault the building.

  I stood at the open door and, shaking my head, and invited her inside. So stupid.

  In silence, Finch tried the keys in the first apartment door. At the third or fourth try, the lock clicked open. We were in. But it proved anticlimactic. The apartment lay empty.

  Inside the next, two vampires sat watching television. They didn’t even know they’d been shot. Darts this time. Clean.

  I looked around the room and spotted two automatic pistols on top of the television. I picked one up. Loaded. “Hey, Finch?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Since when were young vampires issued firearms?”

  “They were really expecting us.”

  Luckily for me, one of these first two vampires turned out to be a slip of a girl. I threw her over my shoulder, and got some of my diminished manhood back by taking her to the van myself. Of course, we didn’t really save any time, but at least I felt better.

  Once back inside the building, the next room, again, proved to be empty.

  “I think they’ve been told not to be alone,” I whispered as we made our way along the corridor.

  In the next apartment lay the obligatory two vampires, not exactly watching television, these two, though. The set had been left on with the sound down, and this pair was distracted beyond my understanding of the word.

  They hacked at each other in almost complete silence, each naked body locked in coitus, their loins twisted together in a writhing mass of limbs, but the most appalling part, was that both had torn the throats from the other, and seemed to be concentrated in eating the other alive. Blood lay and spurted everywhere. Frozen in complete disbelief, I stood for a moment. Seems the rage-infected blood had gotten to these two.

  Nasty.

  Then new holes appeared in their writhing chests. They both railed against the invasion, then collapsed, still entwined. Finch’s Căluşari blades had bitten deep.

  “Watch out. Heads are going to roll.”

  I stepped back as the two heads got ripped from shoulders.

  “I’m not carrying that mess back to the van,” Finch said into my ear. I’ll leave this one for the survivors to tidy up.”

  “I thought the plan said ‘No Survivors’?” I grinned as I spoke.

  “Lyman,” Finch’s voice sounded suddenly grim. “There’s always survivors.”

  “Green glow; snipers. Watch out.” Finch’s voice. “It might be a trap.”

  My first thought was to Lyman’s safety. I’m not sure he could have survived being killed twice.

  “Mandy?” Valérie sounded very serious, her voice clipped and authoritative.

  “Yes?”

  “Sweep the area, keep doing it at speed, never stand still. Meet me by the white car in the parking lot. White Mustang.”

  Just seconds later, I crouched behind the car. I’d seen the green glow from both rifles. One to the north, one to the east. At the entrance to the dorm building, a body lay on the grass.

  I heard Valérie’s footsteps. “Two snipers,” I said as she neared.

  “Yes,” I heard her reply by voice and milliseconds later in my ear. “And a tempting goat pinned to the ground as bait.”

  “Oh, boy. So they know we’re coming?”

  “Seems like it.”

  “So what’s the plan?” I deferred to her authority.

  “You take the one to the north, out by the bleachers, I’ll take the other.”

  “Okay. When?”

  “Right now’s as good a time as any.”

  After hearing her retreating footsteps, I set off; a long looping run so he’d never see me coming. Slowing down, but never breaking stride, I approached from behind. He lay beside a large trash bin, hidden from main view by bushes. I ignored both. Jumping into the air, I landed on his back with both feet; smashing the air out of his lungs, and crushing his ribs. A quick twist of his moaning neck, and his head lay in my hands.

  My signature move.

  I waited a moment, giving Valérie silence to tackle her target.

  “Mandy?”

  “Done.”

  “Good girl. Meet me by the goat.”

  It turned out to be a vampire. Crazed out on something, burbling incoherently, his clawed fingers snatching at us as we approached.

  “Rage blood,” Valérie said.

  “Rage?”

  “Lyman’s words, not mine.”

  “Ah. Shall we put him out of his misery?”

  “Probably better not. The longer we leave him, the more they’ll not know we’re here.”

  I nodded my head, although the prospect of walking past him every time didn’t sit right with me.

  On cue, the van driver met us at the dorm door, opened it, and invited us inside. Then he took off very quickly.

  Valérie wasted no time in getting inside the first dorm room.

  Silence. We walked into the dark room, the only light came through the thin lace curtains. The yellow lamps outside cast a strange glow over the room. As I advanced, I used every sense I had, but couldn’t detect anything. Yes, vampire had lived here. Yes, vampire had been here recently, but nothing right now.

  The room lay deserted.

  We crossed the hallway, and as soon as Valérie had the door open, I knew there were vampires inside. I readied myself for both action and flight. Although I was in this for the evening, and felt determined to see it through to the end, I wasn’t afraid of running away, either. That warm beach seemed too good to give up, just for one more vampire feather in the Helsing’s cap.

  Our feet made no noise on the carpet-covered concrete floor, and as I passed the wall which let me look into the living room, two vampires sat on the sofa, pistols in hand, looking around the room.

  Talk about being ‘on guard.’

  Valérie’s prepared rule was ‘when in doubt, take the one on the right’. So I leveled my pistol at his head, and prepared to take my shot.

  Then in my ear I heard the quietest ticking; Valérie clicking her tongue or something.

  One, two, Blammo!

  My first dart hit him directly in the forehead, my second in the cheek beside his mouth.

  Directly after my first shot, Valérie’s dart gun fired. Also twice.

  Neither of the vampires had moved a fraction of an inch.

  In the silence which followed, both guns moved slightly from vampire grip, then disappeared. We’d done it.

  “Good job.” Valérie broke the silence.

  I pulled my guy onto my shoulder, which always seemed to be difficult for me to coordinate with the invisible thing, then Valérie touched him. Pop. Invisible.

  I didn’t run to the van, more kinda jogged. As I approached, the door opened, and I faintly heard Valérie’s voice. “One coming in.”

  Miranda’s voice cooed at the vampire’s forced return to visibility.

  I flipped my switch to the third setting. “One more.”

  The body hit the floor with a thump, and again, sounds of astonishment from inside the van.

  Whatever.

  “Next.” Valérie’s voice in my ear.

>   “I’m with you.”

  As we advanced on Alucard West, Finch reported in my ear. “Seems like every second or so room is empty. They’ve been told to pair up for safety. Looks like they’re pretty organized.”

  True to her words, the next room proved empty again.

  Room four had more life in it. As I rounded into the main living room, I stood astonished to see all three vampires playing a shoot-em-up video game.

  “Back outside.”

  I quickly retreated to the corridor.

  “The sound is pretty loud.” Man, I could hear the tension in her voice. “What happens if we take them out, and the sound dies? What happens if the sound dying is the alarm?”

  I could see her point, but the logic didn’t sit right with me. “I’m not sure they’re that well organized. If we bypass them, and the alarm goes off further on, we’ll have vampires behind us. That’d be bad.”

  She paused for a moment. “Okay back in. Two darts in each, rapid fire.”

  “Roger.” The word seemed to come out before I’d said it. “Did I really say that?”

  “Yes you did. Let’s go.”

  The door opened again, and I carefully walked inside. Guys on the screen died, yelling, blood flying from their many wounds. Blood even splashed onto the screen. Gross. Real life turned out to be much cleaner.

  Pfft! Pfft!

  Apart from the accompanying music, the noise stopped.

  “Valérie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You take the bodies. I’m going to see what I can do to keep the noise going.”

  “Okay.”

  I pulled the controls from the now vegetative vampires, and fiddled. Beside me, the vampires vanished, one at a time.

  I pushed buttons, then as I fumbled through the game, then obviously died because I was crap at it, a game menu appeared.

  Continue.

  Start at a Previous level.

  Main Menu.

  I clicked the last one.

  Demo Mode.

  Perfect. By the time Valérie had returned from depositing the last body, the noise seemed exactly as it had been when we’d entered.

  There were ten doors on the ground floor, and we’d only tried four. As we advanced on the dorm again, I realized just how long this night could last. Above me lay three floors, probably all filled with vampires. For the life of me, I couldn’t figure out how they’d never organized a better defense.