Stalking the Vampire

by Mike Resnick

  “You have already stated your demand,” said Vlad. “It is unacceptable. Give me what I came for or prepare to suffer the consequences.”

  “I can't give it to you,” answered Mallory.

  “Why not?” thundered the vampire.

  “Because it is currently in a coffin aboard a ship bound for Eastern Europe.”

  Vlad Dracule emitted a roar of fury. His eyes narrowed, his face became elongated, and suddenly he was exposing truly phenomenal canines.

  “Prepare to die!” he thundered.

  “If I die, I won't die alone,” said Mallory. “Now shut up and listen.”

  The vampire glared at the detective, but remained where he was.

  “Let me tell you what your options are,” said Mallory. “First, you can kill me, but if you do you're never going to learn the name and location of the ship that's about to leave with your coffin.”

  “I will find it,” growled Vlad Dracule.

  Mallory shook his head. “You can't even leave this office without my help. Do you remember what you felt like when you ripped the dialysis center apart earlier tonight? While I was at the cemetery, my partner treated all the doors and windows with a much stronger solution, courtesy of a gentleman named Odd Peter. If I don't open the door for you, you're stuck here.”

  “Fool!” rasped the vampire. “How do you think I entered?”

  “You entered through the one untreated window, which I left open for you. But my partner was standing outside the building, and the moment she saw you fly in, she closed the window and treated it. But don't take my word for it; go see if it's still open.”

  Vlad raced to the window in the next room. His roar of anger when he saw it was closed was almost deafening.

  “Your second option,” said Mallory when the vampire returned to the office, “is to agree to my terms. Swear to me that you will never return to this country, and I'll let you out.” He looked out a window. “I think you'll have time to make it to the ship just ahead of the sun.”

  Vlad Dracule stared at him with more hate than Mallory had ever seen on a face, human or otherwise.

  “While you're considering which option to choose, it's only fair that I tell you that I have two friends aboard the ship who have been instructed to seal your coffin the moment you're in it, and the ship's personnel have orders not to unseal it until it has been returned to Transylvania.” Mallory met the vampire's gaze. “Now it's up to you. Are you really as tired of living as you say, or would you like to take your chances in the old country?”

  “How little you know of things!” hissed Vlad Dracule. “You cannot kill me.”

  “Maybe so, maybe not,” replied Mallory, “but I can keep you in this office until they tear the building down. And while I don't know quite what your need for that soil is, I know that if we talk for another couple of minutes, it's gone and you're stranded here without it.”

  The vampire stared at him curiously. “You have absolutely no fear of me, have you?”

  “Wings O'Bannon has no fear of you,” said Mallory. “And he'd have been dead five minutes into this case. Me, I'm scared to death of you. That's why I took all the precautions I took.” He glanced out the window again. “The sun's up in another few minutes. What's your decision?”

  For just a moment Mallory thought Vlad was going to pounce on him and tear him apart. Then all the vampire's energy seemed to vanish, and he was once again the old and wizened man that had first entered the office.

  “We have an agreement,” he said. “Now let me out. I must reach that ship before sunrise.”

  Mallory walked him to the office door and opened it.

  “Go to the same set of docks where you arrived last week,” said Mallory as they walked out onto the street. “At Pier 66 you'll find a ship called the Cryptic Corpse. Go to the cargo hold—there will be a window opened to accommodate you—and you'll find your coffin.”

  “I will not thank you,” said Vlad Dracule. “But I will give you a piece of advice.”

  “Yes?”

  “If you should go abroad in the future, stay out of Transylvania.”

  “Words to live by,” said Mallory sardonically.

  “Precisely,” said Vlad—and suddenly there was a pile of black clothes at Mallory's feet, and a huge bat was flying south and east across the night sky.

  As he returned to his office, Mallory heard a familiar voice say: “Not bad, John Justin Mallory. Not bad at all. Next week we shall be at hazard again, but in honor of your accomplishment I hereby declare a one-week truce.”

  “So I got rid of the vampire and impressed the Grundy,” said Mallory as he sat down at his desk. “Let's see Wings O'Bannon pull that off.”

  “How are we going to clean Odd Peter's formula off the doors and windows?” asked Winnifred as she and Mallory sat in their office.

  “Why bother?” replied Mallory. “It only affects vampires. Maybe Vlad had friends.”

  She looked surprised. “Do you really think so?”

  “Him? Friends?” Mallory shook his head. “Not a chance.”

  “I still feel badly that we let him go,” said Winnifred. “We should have done something more.”

  “Like what?” said Mallory. “Instead of feeling badly, you ought to try feeling lucky that you and your trolls didn't run into him during the night. I think bullets would just have annoyed him—even from a .550 Nitro Express.”

  “Not these bullets,” said Winnifred. She reached into her purse, pulled one out, and tossed it to the detective.

  “Well, I'll be damned!” said Mallory. “I've heard of hard-nosed bullets and soft-nosed bullets, but this is the first time I've ever seen a wood-nosed bullet. Still, I don't know if it would have done the trick. When all is said and done, it's not a stake.”

  “It's wood and it would have pierced his heart.”

  “I think maybe the reason for a stake is to keep the wound distended. These would have passed right through him, always assuming they could even pierce his skin.” He grimaced. “Besides, all this talk about killing him is academic.”

  “I don't follow you, John Justin.”

  “He was already dead.”

  She sighed. “I keep forgetting that.”

  The phone rang, and Mallory picked it up. “Yeah?”

  “Just reporting in,” said Nathan.

  “He showed up?”

  “He beat the sun by less than a minute,” said the dragon.

  “And you sealed him in?”

  “Yes. What do we do now?”

  “Why don't you come by the office, and we'll all go out for some breakfast?” said Mallory.

  “I've never been there.”

  “Bats knows the way.”

  “Okay, we'll leave just as soon as he finishes sloshing on his sunscreen and remembering where he stashed his shades.”

  Mallory hung up the phone. “He's in his coffin.”

  “Who was that?”

  “Scaly Jim Chandler.”

  “The dragon,” she said, nodding. “And what happened to the little vampire?”

  “Bats McGuire,” said Mallory. “He's with Nathan. They're on their way here now. They stuck by me all night. I figure the least we can do is buy them breakfast.”

  “Certainly,” she agreed. She looked around the office. “I don't see Felina. She isn't…?”

  “No,” replied the detective. “She just lost a battle with some gefilte fish.”

  There was a scratching at the office door. Winnifred got up and opened it, and Felina, her belly a bit distended, staggered in.

  “I'm dying!” moaned the cat-girl.

  “Come on now,” said Mallory. “You ought to be over it by now.”

  “After you left we had tuna, and then sardines, and smoked fish, and more lox, and more gifted fish, and I'm dying.”

  She lay down on the floor, curled up in a fetal ball.

  “What's this all about, John Justin?” asked Winnifred.

  “It's about a cat whose eyes w
ere bigger than her stomach.”

  Felina rolled onto her back and pointed to her belly. “Nothings bigger than my stomach!”

  “Win a few, lose a few,” commented Mallory. “Or maybe I should say, eat a lot, lose a lot.”

  “Don't make jokes,” moaned the cat-girl. “If I die, whose back will you skritch?”

  “I haven't really thought that far ahead,” said Mallory.

  “She really seems to be in some distress,” observed Winnifred.

  “So would you be if you'd eaten half the population of the Atlantic Ocean,” answered Mallory. “Let her lie where she is. She'll be fine in another month or two.”

  Felina hissed at him and began crawling across the floor. “I'm going into the next room to die. Then you'll be sorry.”

  “I'm already sorry,” said Mallory.

  “You are?” she asked, her face brightening a bit.

  “Yeah. I hate to think of the bill the guy at the deli is going to send us.”

  “You're cruel and heartless,” whispered Felina as she reached the next room, waited until she was sure they were both watching her, and collapsed.

  “I thought I just saved us all from someone who was cruel and heartless.”

  “I hate you.”

  “Remember that the next time you want your back scratched.”

  “Skritched!” she moaned.

  “Should we do anything for her?” asked Winnifred in worried tones.

  “Maybe just buy her a blackboard and make her write ‘I will not eat seventy-three pounds of fish at one sitting‘ a few hundred times.” The rays of the sun began pouring in through the window. “By the way, have you made funeral arrangements for Rupert?”

  “Yes, I took care of it when I claimed his body at the morgue.” She paused. “Tell me about this Odd Peter. I never heard of his establishment before.”

  Mallory spent the next twenty minutes describing his evening, from the Vampire State Building to the morgue to the Zombies' Ball to the Gryphon's Roost to the Battery to the dialysis center to Odd Peter's to the waterfront to the Hills of Home. He had just finished when Nathan and McGuire showed up.

  “What the hell have you got on your door?” asked McGuire as Nathan opened it and the little vampire stepped into the office.

  “A little something Odd Peter mixed up for us,” replied the detective. “Don't touch the windows, and let someone else open the door for you, and you'll be okay.”

  “Hello again, ma'am,” said Nathan. He looked around the office. “Where is she?”

  “Where is who?” asked Mallory.

  “You really and truly don't have a gorgeous oversexed secretary named Velma?”

  Winnifred and Mallory exchanged looks.

  “She's on vacation,” said Winnifred.

  “Hah!” said Nathan. “I knew he was putting me on.”

  “Okay,” said Mallory, “are we all ready for breakfast?”

  He could have guessed what was coming next, as ninety-plus pounds of cat-girl landed on his back. “I'm ready, John Justin!” said Felina, stifling a little ladylike belch.

  The five of them walked out into the early morning sunlight.

  “We missed All Hallows’ Eve,” said Winnifred, her face reflecting her disappointment. “The parties, the pageants, the celebrations, all the ghosts and spirits are gone for another year.” She sighed. “Everything's back to normal.”

  “Out of the way, Mac!” yelled a goblin with a satchel slung over its shoulder, sitting atop a yellow elephant that missed trampling the detective by inches. “The US Mail stops for no man!”

  “Yeah,” grated Mallory. “Everything's back to normal.”

  I have been asked many times: What is the best weapon to use against a vampire?

  Are you better off with a wooden stake, or perhaps a wood-shafted arrow shot from a crossbow that has been blessed by a priest? I have even heard of one gentleman who created wooden bullets, which doubtless seemed like a brilliant idea until the first one lost its structural integrity upon firing and caused the pistol to explode in his hand.

  The answer, of course, is the very best weapon to use is your brain. Wooden stakes and arrows and other traditional anti-vampiric weapons are all very well and good, but we're not speaking of a dumb herbivore like a gazelle or a unicorn here, an animal that seeks only to escape. No, my friends, the vampire is endowed with a brain every bit as good as your own and is as anxious to kill you as you are to kill him. Never forget that: he is not trying to escape, and while you may trick him from time to time, you are no more likely to outsmart him than he is to outsmart you—perhaps less so, since in all likelihood he has been around longer and has certainly been hunting men longer than you have been hunting vampires.

  I suggest that you study the beasts of the field. The predator never seeks out the strongest member of the herd; he goes after the young, the ancient, and the infirm. It is not a bad principle to apply when hunting the vampire.

  No, you won't find any young ones, and the ancient ones are as strong as any of the others. But the principle holds true: you attack the weakest, and since there is no way to differentiate, you attack when your prey is at his weakest—in broad daylight, when he's asleep in his coffin.

  So just as the predator knows that sooner or later his prey must come to the water hole to slake its thirst, the vampire hunter knows that every day at sunrise the vampire must seek out his coffin, lie down in his native soil, and remain there until sunset.

  Which means that just as our hypothetical predator must know the terrain, must know every water hole, every place of concealment, so must the vampire hunter learn his terrain, which is to say, he must become intimately acquainted with cemeteries, mausoleums, mortuaries, and any other place where a vampire is likely to store his coffin.

  The predator stakes out his territory, usually by leaving signatures of urine or dung on the grass and shrubbery, signals that his rivals can read. It is essential that the vampire hunter stake out his territory as well, though by more socially acceptable means, because the mature vampire has heightened senses of perception and will be as likely to spot three or four of his predators as just one.

  Just as the rhino has his tick birds to warn him of approaching danger, just as the gorgon has his smerps, so the vampire has his helpers. Usually they are called renfields, though the names vary with the territory. They are the once-bitten and twice-bitten who are in thrall to the vampire and serve as his lookouts, his informers, and his late-night snacks, or frequently all three. So if you see a renfield walking through the mortuary, keep perfectly still until he has given the all-clear sign to his dark master, and even then you would be wise to wait until the vampire is safely ensconced inside his coffin before showing yourself. Most renfields are cowards at heart, and even those who aren't can usually be bought off with a handful of insects and spiders, which form the staple of their daily diet.

  Then it is simply a matter of waiting until the renfield is gone, opening the coffin, and driving home that wooden stake. I prefer hickory, but oak, maple, and even redwood have been used with some success. I would beware of the wood of the African accacia tree, as you never know if a witch doctor has cursed it.

  I see some unhappy faces out there. I know, I know—this runs contrary to your sporting instincts, as it doesn't give the vampire a sporting chance to escape. The thing I have to keep emphasizing is that he doesn't want to escape. Nor will he meet you on equal footing: when he is awake and on the stalk, even a bullet from a .550 Nitro Express won't slow him down. If you can get close enough to drive in that wooden stake, you'll kill him, of course, but he is as aware of that as you are and will be on his guard.

  How would you approach a vampire?

  Again, your greatest weapon is your brain. Let me give you a few examples.

  Vampires, as you know, leave no reflection in the mirror. You might stare at him, frown, and offer him a comb. It's a reasonable thing to do, since he has no idea how his hair looks, and as he reaches ou
t to accept the comb, you move in quickly with the stake.

  If you are a woman, and this works not only for vampires but for any other human-appearing creatures you cannot kill from afar, just stare at his crotch and pretend you are trying very hard to repress a giggle. He will wonder what is wrong, perhaps even ask you. Just blush and say that of course nothing is wrong, then put your hand over your mouth to stifle a laugh. Sooner or later he'll look down to see if his fly is unzipped, and that is the instant you'll move in for the kill.

  Or here's one that almost never fails to work. You plan to attend a crowded party, and you know that the vampire has spotted you following him and will try to neutralize you there. You go to the local pet store and buy a small mouse; even a lab rat will do. Then you give it to a confederate who will also be attending the party. When the confederate sees that the vampire has separated you out from the pack, so to speak, and has you cornered, he releases the mouse. Invariably the first woman to see it will scream (and if not, the confederate can always goose her to elicit a shriek). You will look in her direction with great concern and say words to the effect that a vampire has just attacked a beautiful young woman in front of everyone. The real vampire, whose instinct is to defend his territory, will of course turn to look—and that's when you'll strike.

  There are numerous other tried-and-true methods, but every last one of them requires brainpower, since in all other areas—except the way your pupils adjust to bright sunlight—he is your superior.

  There is one method I have to address, simply because it runs against all the finer instincts of blood sports enthusiasts. A number of you have not been members of the Lower South Manhattan Blood Sports Enthusiasts Club as long as I have, so you may not know why Dr. Theodore Van Rhysling was expelled. Dr. Van Rhysling, for those of you who are not aware of the case, specialized in rare blood diseases, and when he found one that was both virulent and incurable, he sent his patient out every night until the vampire that had been terrorizing Dr. Van Rhysling's neighborhood encountered him, took a bite, and died a slow and horrible death. If any of you have had the same idea, be warned that your membership, like Dr. Van Rhysling's, will be revoked. The true sportsman never uses poisoned bait.