by Roger Keller
“That biker had like, a lot of pills in his system,” Heather said.
“You OK?” I said while I checked out more of the posters.
“Yeah, it was mostly painkillers, prescription shit” she said, choosing each word carefully. “This’ll probably be my last chance to get fucked up for a while.”
“Is Misty high too?” I said. “I can sense her.”
“She’s trying to stay hidden,” Heather stretched and yawned, her breasts pressing against her bootleg concert t-shirt, “like, she wants to test herself. See if you can find her.”
I looked at each corner of the room. Misty crouched in the corner past Heather’s gun closet. Her glowing eyes were aimed right at me. The corner was darker than it should have been, in fact it was the only shadowed corner. An unnatural, shifting haze hung around Misty.
“Found you,” I said.
“Fuck. Really?” Misty popped up out of the fading gloom and walked over. “Hmm, did you see me or just sense that I was there?”
“Both,” I said. “It took a minute to actually see you though.”
“Heather couldn’t see me,” she said proudly.
I sat down next to Heather and put my feet up. Misty put a movie on the main TV and hopped on the newly re-discovered leather love-seat.
“Looks like you guys got some work done,” I said.
Heather snuggled close to me and shut her eyes.
“It was weird,” Misty said. “Once we got going we couldn’t stop. Heather has all this awesome vintage stuff. She robbed a video store, back in the Eighties.”
“I’ve done stuff like that a few times,” Heather said. “Most of the best stuff came from this place called Captain Midnight’s. They had bootlegs, Japanese imports, all kinds of cool stuff. The government shut them down for pirating VHS tapes. We went in right after they arrested the owners and we took everything, including most of the evidence. The FBI was pissed. It like, ruined their case.”
“Speaking of the government,” I said. “I just met someone.”
Heather sat up and looked at me, suddenly very serious. “What?”
“Some agent followed me around,” I said. “I talked to her at a gas station. She wanted to know what really happened to the book thieving society.”
Misty moved to the edge of the couch.
“What does she think happened?” Heather said.
I told them all about my meeting with SAC Angela. Heather remembered the name.
“Fuck that bitch,” Heather said. “She came around Lee’s place once, back in the Eighties.”
I saw flashes of the past on the TV. Heather and Karla flanked Lee on the steps of his mansion. Karla wore her Phantom of the Opera mask, which didn’t seem to clash with her huge hair and shoulderpads. Lee had white slacks and a white sportcoat, with no shirt on underneath, of course. Heather was dressed in heavy metal gear with a skull belt buckle. A pack of Eighties fashion-victim vampires stood behind Lee. Everyone was armed. MacArthur and her fellow agents looked scared. The scene shifted. Heather held a battered Haliburton briefcase out to the agents. When MacArthur reached for it, Heather let the briefcase fall to the mill’s concrete floor. The vampires had a good laugh at this. The case was too light to be full of money, but MacArthur held it close as if it was made out of gold.
“It makes sense that the FBI knows about us,” Misty said. “They spy on everybody.”
I rubbed my eyes and tried to shut out the visions.
“The FBI sure likes to think they know everything.” Heather relaxed back against me. “I like how all they cared about how was how rich those fuckers were. Think about it Misty, they know so much, but I bet they never bothered the Society when they were alive.”
“Right,” Misty said.
“Somebody burned the house you killed that vampire in,” Heather said. “We saw it on the news.”
“That means they’re here,” Misty said.
“At least a few of ‘em,” Heather said.
“Should we tell Lee?” I said.
“He was expecting it,” Heather said. “He was probably watching them when they found out what you did.”
I could see it like I was standing in that basement again. The headless librarian lay rotting on the floor. Two young vampires stood over him, shaking with rage, or maybe fear. They argued over what to do next. Each one was dressed like an action movie character, with a long leather duster and sunglasses. Each one looked worried. This wasn’t what they signed on for.
Lee loomed in a corner behind them, holding a huge HK SOCOM pistol, complete with a silencer. He looked at the overbuilt pistol then the two young vampires. Heather would’ve called them posers. Lee smiled, holstered the pistol and drew a stag-handled bowie knife from his LL Bean jacket. The young vampires couldn’t see or sense him, yet. A dark haze swirled around Lee, like what I’d seen earlier with Misty, only much stronger.
The young vampires didn’t notice Lee until the haze faded around him. He moved in a blur. Blood showered the dry basement floor. Lee stepped back at human speed to admire his handiwork. Two headless, butchered bodies stood upright for a second. The weight of their own entrails pulled them off balance and they fell.
I snapped back to Heather’s basement.
“You keep seeing things,” Misty said.
I nodded. “I need some fucking sleep.”
“Yeah, it’s getting late,” Heather said. “There’s so much left to do and we’re not even half way there. I mean it’s like, already happening out there.”
“Let it happen,” I said. “Let ‘em all kill each other. It’s not like Lee owns us.”
“It’s not that easy,” Heather said. “We go way back, Lee and I.”
Misty put Jaws on, the first of the shark movies. It was perfect to fall asleep to.
Chapter 6
In my dreams, I found myself back in the Eighties. Heather and Lee stood on one of the abandoned mill’s crumbling smokestacks. They were watching a group of teenagers partying in the parking lot below. A crescent moon hung in a cloudy sky behind them.
Even this early in the Eighties the industrial park was dying. Lee had recently rebuilt the mansion he’d claimed, inside the abandoned mill. The teenagers were trespassing on vampire territory.
“Look at those fuckers,” Heather said. “Let’s go run ‘em outta here.”
Lee clicked his claws on the rusty guard rail. He smiled with a mouth full of jagged teeth.
“Don’t be hasty,” he said. “This is a chance for you to learn. And, for me to amuse myself.”
“OK.” Heather cocked her head and made a face.
“Come.” Lee waved has arm, his black silk shirt flowing in the breeze. He climbed over the rail and made his way down the smokestack effortlessly, barely scratching the old bricks. Heather followed him. Occasionally she’d put a foot wrong, catch herself violently, and a broken brick would fall. The teenagers below didn’t notice a thing.
Lee and Heather found a new vantage point behind a pile of rubble. The air around them rippled. Heather held a clawed finger to her lips. Lee laughed.
“Continue to concentrate in the way I showed you,” he said out loud, “and they will hear nothing.”
The teenagers, there were at least a dozen of them, danced to New Wave music and drank cheap beer. A bonfire made from broken pallets and other industrial trash burned inside the circle of cars.
“What do you know of these trespassers?” Lee said.
“They look like rich kids.” Heather’s eyes narrowed. “You know, rich kids used to be some of my best customers.”
“Look harder,” Lee said. “What sort of people are they? Shall we kill them or maybe just give them a good scare?”
Heather stared at them wolfishly for what seemed like an hour.
Lee tapped his boot. “Well?”
“Let’s waste ‘em,” Heather said. “I could see things, things they did. Like, they killed this nerdy kid from their school. It was a just supposed to be prank, but they killed him.
They hung him in the locker room with a jump rope. He twitched there for while and choked ‘till his face changed colors. Cops thought it was suicide. Most of ‘em aren’t even sorry about it.”
“It’s good to take scum like them,” Lee said, looking past the kids, remembering something.
“Why?” Heather said.
“What do you mean, why?” The German crept back into Lee’s voice and he started pronouncing w’s as v’s. He turned to her. “No one knows why. ”
“OK,” Heather said. “Whatever.”
“I have some ideas for these spoiled children,” Lee said. “Go and inform the others that they are not to interfere. I will hunt alone. They may share the blood of course. And you will assist me.”
“Alright,” Heather said, her eyes glowing, drinking up the fire.
The scene shifted to Lee’s ballroom. Dozens of vampires gathered around their master. Lee held up a welder’s mask.
“The men who once worked in this mill used this,” Lee said. “It is very dark and restricts vision. I shall use it to make the hunt more challenging and of course interesting.”
The vampires clapped. Karla, her face undamaged at this point, smiled. She had a white streak dyed in her jet black hair. At this point the vampires seemed to be transitioning poorly from the Disco Age to the Eighties. One of them still wore John Travolta’s white suit from Stayin’ Alive.
The scene changed again. Lee marched out of his bizarre mansion wearing work pants, a surplus army jacket and the welding mask. Standing well over six feet tall, he made a great slasher movie villain. Heather followed him, her face flushed with fresh blood. She’d fixed her hair and put on tennis shoes, and someone’s valley girl clothes. Lee stopped Heather and flipped his welding mask up. He looked her over.
“Wait,” he said. “Like this.”
Lee drug his claws across her stomach. Heather winced and cocked her head. Blood seeped into her pink t-shirt.
“Asshole.” She punched Lee in the shoulder and rubbed the claw wounds. The blood stopped a few seconds later.
“You are supposed to look terrified,” Lee said. “Pretend you are some empty headed, silly girl, but sexy.”
Heather made an annoyed face, then bit her lower lip and raised her eyebrows plaintively.
“Yes, perfect.” Lee flipped the mask down. “Now hurry, limp like you’re hurt.”
Heather ran sideways at human speed. She held her side and tried to look scared, but she just looked excited.
The teenagers jumped when Heather appeared next to them. A girl with a brunette, side-ponytail dropped her beer. “Oh-my-God.”
“You guys have to help me,” Heather said. “He killed them.”
“Whoa,” a jock in a letterman’s jacket said. “What happened to you?”
“He’s a monster,” Heather said. “We were like, out here partying and he, he…”
Heather grabbed the letterman and buried her face in his chest, pretending to sob. I could see her smiling.
A beer-bellied jock took a baseball bat out of his Ford Bronco. “Come on out, faggot.” He shouted into the night and swung the bat. “I got something for ya.” He was the first to go.
Lee materialized behind the overweight jock and seized the bat. Wood splintered under his bone white fingers. The crowd shrank back, horrified. Lee drove his claws into the jock’s back and hoisted him up.
“Run,” Heather said, while Lee dismembered the jock. “This way. We’ll loose him in that old building.”
The girls ran panicked after Heather. The other jocks looked like they were going to do something, but when Lee twisted the big kid’s shaggy head off and threw it at them, they ran after the girls.
Heather lead the group into the mill. They clustered around her in an empty corridor whispering. No one questioned why there were weird colored lights on in an abandoned factory.
“What the fuck was that?” a handsome letterman, who had to have been the quarterback, said.
“Whatever he was, I think we lost him,” a big-haired, blonde girl said.
A shadow loomed at the end of the corridor. Lee moved forward with slow deliberate steps.
“No, we didn’t,” a mousy brunette said. She adjusted her glasses and ran.
“Wait,” Heather said, “we need to stay together.”
The group ran across the empty production floor. They stopped cold when Lee’s mansion came into view. Multi-colored lights lit the outside up like something from the Sixties.
“What the hell?” at least two of the jocks said.
“Someone lives there,” the big-haired blonde said. “We should go ask for help or at least warn them.”
The group headed for Lee’s mansion. Heather moved last, trying not to laugh. Lee appeared on the mansion’s marble steps from nowhere. The kids froze. Lee pointed a wicked claw at them. The group scattered.
Scenes changed faster. The teenagers were trapped in the maze-like mill. Lee hunted them and caught them one at a time. He drug each one across the mill floor, back to the mansion where his coven waited.
The big-haired blonde found herself kneeling on the ballroom floor, surrounded by leering vampires. She held her wounds and sobbed. “What’s wrong with you people?” She pleaded with them. Karla kicked her in the face. They went at the blonde all at once in a blind frenzy. Razor sharp fangs sliced through stone washed denim and cashmere.
Lee drug a muscle bound, Afro-American jock into the crowded ballroom. The jock found his second wind and fought the vampires that surrounded him. He managed to land three punches that would have knocked any human unconscious. Karla rubbed her jaw and laughed. A dust covered vampire adjusted his puffy pirate shirt and opened the jock’s throat with a hooked claw. Karla held the jock upright while the others feasted on his blood.
The quarterback and two of the girls made it to the lower levels. Other, more independent or less popular, members of Lee’s coven made their homes down there. The three humans stumbled through a storage area and hid behind an antique highboy.
“Why is this happening to us?” the mousy brunette said, as they huddled together.
The scene shifted to the mansion. Heather sat on the marble steps and drank blood from a red plastic cup. She looked comfortable, back in her heavy metal clothes. Lee drug a screaming, red haired girl past her. The girl grabbed desperately at Heather’s jacket. Heather shrugged the redhead loose without bothering to look at her face. A few minutes later Lee joined Heather on the steps. He chucked the welding mask across the production floor.
“This grows tiresome,” Lee said. “I have mastered hunting with limited vision. I cannot shake the feeling that I’m missing something.”
“Maybe next time we should give them guns.” Heather played with her cross.
“How is that supposed to amuse me?” Lee said, watching the smoke rise from Heather’s fingers warily.
“It would amuse me,” Heather said. “I can see through your eyes you know, like see what you see…sometimes. I watched you hunt those kids all night.”
“You are not the only one who can do that,” Lee said.
“Was she the last one?” Heather said.
“By my count there are three left,” Lee said.
“I’m sure you’ll find them all, babe,” Heather said.
“It is time to end this,” Lee said. “Come, the night is forsaking us.”
“Really?” Heather said. “I have to like, help you more. Make Karla or Evan or that dork, Deveraux hunt them. They didn’t do shit tonight. Come on, I’m feeling nice and mellow.”
Heather lifted off the steps and floated to the mill floor. She wobbled when her boots hit the concrete. Lee rubbed his chin and whispered, “Schiesse.”
“What the fuck was that?” Heather spun around. “Did you just see that?”
“It’s not surprising.” Lee shrugged his shoulders.
“Why didn’t you tell me that I can fly?” Heather said.
“Eh, well.” Lee joined her on the production
floor. “I wasn’t sure if you’d be able and I didn’t want you to get your hopes up. It’s not something you want to do just anywhere, you know. It’ll drain your strength, quickly. It’s usually only good for short distances. Also, you don’t want humans to see.”
“Duh,” Heather said. She put her arms on Lee’s shoulders. “Let’s go find those kids.”
*****
I snapped awake on Heather’s couch with a stiff back. Jaws was playing on repeat. I checked my phone. It was noon. I could imagine the sun burning overhead and I didn’t really miss it. The best times I’d ever had happened after dark.
“I know what Lee needed.” I shook Heather.
“What are you talking about?” Heather said. “What time is it?”
“When you guys hunted the high school kids in the mill,” I said, “what Lee was missing was a bad ass weapon, like a machete or a big survival knife.”
“Fuck off.” Heather pulled her jacket over her head. “High school kids, what the fuck are you talking about? Ugh. Go back to sleep.”
Misty grumbled next to me. I took a hit from Marcello’s flask, relaxed, and watched Quint talk about surviving the sinking of the USS Indianapolis while I drifted back to sleep.
*****
I woke up before Misty and Heather. The clock on my phone read 3:30 PM. I left the suburban vampire lair and went looking for something to eat.
As I drove I did the math in my head. I had about three thousand in cash. And the gold, who knew how much that was worth. Probably not enough to retire on. Ron had the right idea, run someplace where the sun always shines and forget everything that happened. I doubted that Lee would bother following me that far from his base, but Heather might. There was no way to predict what she would do next. I felt something for her, and that was probably going to get me killed.
I was OK with the idea of dying. I’d already lived for what seemed like a long time. I’d partied after everyone else passed out, way too often. I had nothing to show for it. Compared to most people in human history I’d lived like a prince. Well, maybe I hadn’t lived like a prince, but I had lived like some decadent Victorian, upper class jerk, the kind of guy that would hang out with Lord Byron and Dorian Gray. And, I knew it was never going to get that good again.