Vampire Mafia: Santa Cruz

by Jackson Stein

  Rachel had seen enough horror movies to know what was going to happen to her. She was going to die a slow and horrible death if she couldn’t find a way to escape. Futile as it was, she again pulled hard against her shackles.

  Luiggi and Giuseppi paid little attention as they continued to prepare the room. When Rachel screamed again, both men only laughed louder.

  “Buena sera, belle mia,” Luiggi said turning toward her, his voice almost holding a polite note, but his bulging eyes betrayed his intentions.

  Rachel thrashed at the chains that bound her to the wall, screaming again for her life as the two men approached.

  Then she saw Giuseppi’s fist… BAM! A right hook to her left temple and everything went dark.

   

  ***

   

  Valentine and Stanic jumped back into the bullet riddled Cadillac. Valentine spoke from behind the wheel. “Before we pay a visit to the Stelino compound we’ll just need to make a quick stop to pick up the explosives. I have an associate called Smith who sells powerful specialty items. Luckily, he lives not far from here. I met him while working undercover.”

  Valentine drove down as many small back streets as possible, trying to keep out of sight from the police, until they reached a vast costal area of open farm land. He pulled off the main road and onto a small dirt driveway, then came to a stop in front of an old dilapidated house. 

  “I had better go in alone,” Valentine said, counting out several hundred dollar bills from the cash in his pocket. “Smith spooks...easily.”

  Valentine got out of the car and made his way to the front door, giving it a gentle knock. The door opened and he disappeared inside. Ten minutes later he emerged from the home holding a dark plastic bag in his arms. He scanned the area for police cruisers as he walked back to the car.

  “I think six sticks of dynamite should do the trick, mate, and I recommend you not drop them,” Valentine warned, handing over the bag. “There’s a sixty second fuse attached and a lighter in the bag as well.” Then he walked around, slid into the vehicle and drove back onto the highway, heading north toward the Stelino compound.

   

  ***

   

  Rachel began to regain consciousness as the two men were chaining her to the table. The room spun like a top and the bright lights blinded her. Pain from the powerful blow to her temple throbbed in her head. As she heard the locks snap on the ankle clamps, she realized this would be her last chance. She had to do something before they could clamp her wrists as well.

  Rachel snapped her eyes open, ready to make a move the second she could catch her captors off guard, when a deafening explosion shook the room.

  KA-BOOM! BABOOM-BOOM!

  The ground and walls trembled from a series of blasts and dust and debris rained down from the ceiling. Both men stopped what they were doing, mouths hanging open as they looked at each other in utter shock.

  Rachel sprang to a sitting position, snatched a scalpel from the side table before the two men could blink and with one quick motion drove the razor-sharp instrument straight into the shorter man’s left eye socket. His other eye opened wide, as if not comprehending what had happened…and a droplet of blood trickled down his face like a lonely, cardinal-red tear.

  Luiggi grabbed onto his partner, but Giuseppi’s weight made them stagger backward across the room.

  “Oh, Giuseppi! No, Giuseppi! Oh, no. Nooooooo!” Luiggi cried as he stood there like a father holding his dying child in his arms, Giuseppi’s eye still spewing blood, his face now braided by a mask of thick, wet crimson.

  Luiggi’s attention shifted from the dying man to the woman on the table. He laid Giuseppi to the side, straightened, and clenched his hands into fists as he glared at Rachel.

  Trapped with her ankles still chained to the table, Rachel felt as if she were in a horror movie, living out her final death scene, frame by agonizing frame, in high-definition slow motion, watching as Luiggi, eyes cold and bulging in search of immediate vengeance, raised his bloodied fists high above his head…and charged

  Rachel grabbed the second scalpel from the side table, slashing it through the air just as Luiggi wrapped his hands around her throat. He stopped cold…mouth open, eyes bulging, His head rolled back on his shoulders, exposing the large gash she’d made just under his left ear and chin. Blood rolled down like spilled red juice into his hands, soaking his apron as he swayed back and forth. She watched as the man somehow reached down and tore the scalpel from her bloody fingers

  Rachel scrambled to the far side of the table, as far from the lurid sight as she could get, not believing it medically possible that he was still standing, let alone lifting a scalpel.

  She watched in frozen horror as he lifted the knife in both hands to a full extension over his head, arching his back like a cobra before it strikes.

  A strangled sort of cry escaped from Rachel’s throat as Luiggi stood directly in front of her, his blood showering down like rain as he tried to stabilize his wavering balance.

  Then he lunged forward with a quick jerk of his arms, bringing the knife slashing downward with all of his body weight behind it.

   

  ***

   

  The Stelino compound was located in an older industrial area on the outskirts of Santa Cruz County. The streets were empty, making it look like a ghost town. Stanic studied the huge structure inside the compound walls. It looked like it was of another time and place, reminding him of an ancient fortress, or battlement—old-world architecture mixed with state-of-the-art security to create a facade that seemed almost impenetrable. He couldn’t imagine anyone wanting to penetrate its walls.

  Except him, of course.

  Not for the first time that day, Stanic questioned what the hell he was doing. None of this had anything to do with him. In fact, he couldn’t be altogether sure Valentine wasn’t just a little crazy. What was a Brit doing working as an FBI agent anyway? He’d heard of guys flipping out and going rogue while under deep cover before and wondered if Valentine hadn’t lost perspective at some point, mixing his casual demeanor with guns and dynamite. Maybe it didn’t only happen in the movies.

  Those men chasing him were real. Their guns were real. The dull ache in his shoulder told him it was all clearly real. One moment of being in the wrong place at the wrong time had changed his life.

  Being at the wrong place at the wrong time seemed have been a specialty of his throughout his life, the one exception being the day he’d met Rachel. Definitely a case of right place, right time. But he wasn’t altogether certain he hadn’t managed to screw that up as well.

  He forced thoughts of her out of his head as Valentine led him to a wall on the south side of the compound, then motioned for Stanic to scale it alongside him.

  Stanic cupped his hands together and held them out to give Valentine a boost. At the top, Valentine reached down with his good hand and helped pull Stanic up. Giving each other a nod, they jumped to the soft soil below and landed with a whispering tha-thud. Their new position was shrouded by an old storage shed and some low-hanging elm tree branches.

  Stanic’s instructions were simple. Make his way to the northern side of the compound, set off the dynamite then get back into position to cover Valentine coming out of the building. If he was lucky enough to come out of the building—hopefully with the logbook in hand

  “Let’s move out,” Valentine said, his voice low and steady.

  Stanic pulled the dynamite from the bag and turned to watch Valentine’s approach. He moved into position on the right side of the building, then darted toward the rear entrance. As Valentine slipped through a back door and into the main building, Stanic could tell by the way he moved he was every bit the FBI Special Forces operative he claimed to be.

  A blood-curdling scream rose up from somewhere inside building.

  “Rachel.” Stanic whispered the name. He didn’t know how he knew it was her, but he just did. He raced along the buildi
ng’s perimeter, making it to the northern side of the structure, where he noticed an open window about a foot above his head. “That was my…Rachel,” he repeated as his throat constricted around his vocal cords and the weight of the world crushed down on his heart.

  Rachel’s screams again rose up from the building and the nauseating vision of Valentine’s severed fingers flashed into his mind.

  He shook it off. Focus. He had to focus. He could tell her agonizing cries were coming from a small culvert at the base of the structure’s exterior…and he’d noticed a dark stairwell leading into what looked like an old cellar or basement. He knew in his heart Rachel was down there…and he had to reach her before it was too late.

  Stanic rolled his thumb across the top of the lighter, lit the dynamite, then stayed to watch the fuse burn, crackle and sizzle, sending warning sparks off in all directions. He let the fuse continue to burn down low, then stepped up next to the building, tossed the bomb inside the window above his head…and dove into the stairwell for cover.

  BABOOM-BOOM-BABOOM!

  Shrapnel flew as an orange mushroom cloud of smoke and fire blasted out from the window and high into the air. Dirt, dust and debris radiated in every direction. Large pieces of the building mixed with shards of broken glass and chunks of metal rained down on top of Stanic as he lay at the bottom of the stairwell. Smoke and dust burned his throat and eyes as he fought for air…

   

  CHAPTER EIGHT

   

   

  Like a big jungle cat maneuvering through thick foliage, Valentine raced to the building and as he expected, the back door was unlocked. He slipped inside, pausing in place at the base of the stairway, listening for any guards that may be walking the grounds. He sidestepped the staircase, instead moving to his right into a small storage closet just below the staircase. He pulled the door nearly closed behind him, then crouched like a predator, watching and waiting as he peered out. 

  A ground rumbling explosion boomed across the courtyard, shaking the walls and floor of his hiding place. Seconds after the blast, charging footsteps came down the stairs from Vincenzo’s office.

  When he heard a door slam and all was quiet, he emerged from the storage closet, scanned for Vincenzo’s men, then bolted up the stairs…gun drawn. He crept into Vincenzo’s office and there, behind an oversized mahogany desk, he spotted the painting of an enormous stone castle burrowed into the lush Italian countryside.

  He walked over and swung the painting away from the wall, realizing he had leveraged the whole mission on this moment and everything depended on his belief that the safe wasn’t locked. As he approached the safe he wondered if he had made a mistake, wondered what he was going to do if he was wrong. He felt a sudden tightening in his chest, making each breath shallow and labored. Beads of sweat broke across his forehead and his heart seemed to pound harder and harder with each passing second.

  This is it…

  He reached out, swung the painting open and with a trembling hand, pulled the handle just as Vincenzo had done so many times in the past.

  Click. It worked.

  He smiled, took in a quick breath as the safe opened, then reached into the dark interior for the logbook.

  Nothing. 

  His stomach shot into his throat as he shoved his hand farther inside, to the right and to the left, touching every inch inside the safe. And still…no logbook.

  Shock ripped through Valentine’s body. He’d made a critical error.

  And people might die because of it.

  He pulled a bit of oxygen into his depleted lungs, then searched through the safe again. Still nothing.

  “You-ah looking for this, eh?” A cold, calculating voice that could only belong to Vincenzo came from behind him.

  Valentine jerked around, poised to raise his gun. But Vincenzo stood in the doorway holding the logbook in one hand and a revolver in the other.

  Oddly, thoughts of Anna and how much he loved her flashed through Valentine’s head. Then images of his childhood…just as he’d heard they do when one can feel his own impending death.

  That was all he needed. He dove to his right and swiveling his body around, raised his gun and fired. Crack-Crack! Two shots dead center in Vincenzo’s forehead. The old man stood there still gripping the logbook in one hand and his gun in the other, a dazed, faraway look in his eyes, as if not knowing he was a dead man…..

   

  ***

   

  Rachel looked at her imminent death, her ankles locked in place as she waited for Luiggi’s scalpel to go to work. As he raised the shining, murderous blade high into the air, she saw his blood red teeth smiling at her as he lunged forward, bringing the knife straight down.

  Watching the events unfold as if in slow motion, Rachel lurched to the side just as the door to the cavernous room flew open with a crash. She turned. John Stanic stood framed in the opening, gun drawn.

  Crack! Crack-crack!

  Luiggi flew back as three shots pounded into his chest. He stumbled backward across the room, colliding into the wall with a heavy thud, and stayed there… propped up, as though he was resting against the wall. After a long moment, he slid slowly downward toward his partner, Giuseppi…dead…with the knife handle still protruding from his left eye. Behind Luiggi, thick blood smeared down from the wall above him as he descended to the floor and took his last breath next to the other man.

   

  ***

   

  Valentine knew his shots had met their mark, but the Mafia boss was somehow still standing in place…as if his body hadn’t yet realized what happened. His eyes seemed vacant as he stood there, swaying back and forth. Two trails of blood rolled down from the center of the man’s forehead, dripping over his eyes and funneling down from the bridge of his nose. Then, Vincenzo began a slow, straight-legged forward fall like a tall tree chopped down at its base. Valentine stepped forward, reached out and snatched the two books from the hands of the dead man as he fell face down to the floor.

  Valentine took a quick look to make sure he had what he needed. The first was a small, leather-bound logbook, but the second book was much larger, its vellum cover thick, rigid and worn. Its pages were tattered and yellow at the edges. As he scanned the parchment and the ancient looking Latin text, he heard the muffled sounds of a door opening, followed by the echo of approaching footsteps.

  He slammed the book shut, dashed down the stairs and out into the courtyard. There, with gun drawn, just to the left of the back door, stood John Stanic, his Glock trained on the doorway directly behind Valentine. Rachel stood a distance away near the shed where the two men had originally entered the compound.

  “Just as we’d planned. Very impressive,” Valentine said, amazed at the calmness in his voice. He’d just killed mafia boss Vincenzo Stelino. The head of the Stelino crime family. The man he’d spent the last three years building a federal case against. The implications would take some time to sink in, but mostly, he was just lucky to be alive. And seeing Rachel’s blood drenched clothes, they were all lucky to be alive.

  “Thanks, mate.”

  Stanic nodded in response. “Anytime…and Valentine, the two men who were going to execute you this morning are dead.” Then he turned and took off…sprinting across the courtyard to where Rachel waited. Valentine followed quickly behind and the three helped each other scale the compound’s outer wall, then sped away in the bullet-riddled black Cadillac.

   

  CHAPTER NINE

   

  They gathered in the castle’s main common room without a sound. Each wore a long, black, flowing robe. The hoods hung low, concealing their eyes, shrouding their faces behind dark shadows. They walked to the center of a large red pentagram engraved into the castle’s stone floor and joined hands. No one spoke. The only light in the chamber emanated from thirteen glowing candles that circled the ancient symbol. Each paused there, standing just inside the flames.

  Finally, Consta
ntino spoke in a drone-like baritone. “We have gathered here to renew our allegiance to the darkness.”

  Nicoli responded, “May our enemies suffer one thousand agonizing deaths.”

  “There will be retribution for all those who oppose us,” Dominic replied.

  “Our vengeance shall be swift and fierce, delivered as retribution to all who stand in our path,” Constantino continued, his tone rising along with their hands.

  Then the brothers began to speak in unison, “Their blood shall spill and their bones shall burn.” With each chorus, their voices grew in amplitude.

  “Their blood shall spill and their bones shall burn!” And again, this time with words broiling with vehemence, their voices vibrating with raw emotion, “THEIR BLOOD SHALL SPILL! AND THEIR BONES SHALL BURN!”

  The brothers then lowered their hands and began to chant “OoohhhMMMMaaaAAAHHHH-oooohhhhMMMMaaaAAAHHHH” with a palpable force that radiated deadly power.

  Next, Constantino stepped away from the group and disappeared into a small room behind him. He returned pushing a large wheeled table over the castle’s uneven rock floor. On top of the table lay a young female, clad in an extravagant white silk robe and adorned by a lavish headdress. She was bound at the ankles and wrists with tight leather straps. A blindfold masked her vision and a gag quieted her screams. She struggled violently against the straps, writhing and pulling with all her might, even though it was of no use.

  Constantino rolled the table onto the center of the pentagram.

  Nicoli produced an ancient dagger wrapped in a velvety cloth. He hunched his shoulders over the weapon and growled like a dog protecting fresh meat as he unwrapped it. The delicate golden dagger was encrusted with bright red and green stones that seemed to catch fire as it sparkled in the flickering candlelight. He looked at Constantino with one raised eyebrow and a sideways sloping smile, like both halves of a ghoulish drama mask had merged into one. He passed the dagger to his brother, bowing his head as the chant began again.