The Shadow Box: Paranormal Suspense and Dark Fantasy Thriller Novels

by Travis Luedke

“Now what?”

  Luc was stronger, faster, and a better fighter. He also had a loaded weapon, while Dwayne had a knife. The only visible advantage Dwayne had was weight. Luc was short and thin, while Dwayne was buff and tall. The knife had a few advantages over a gun; it didn’t run out of bullets, and it could be used while grappling.

  Dwayne lowered his head and charged into Luc.

  The Frenchman dodged, but Dwayne was fast enough to change course. Luc took the big man to the chest, and they rolled to the dirt together. Dwayne roared, while Luc laughed.

  “You’re a determined one, mon frère!” he said between collisions, one with Dwayne, the second with the ground. He dropped the Tommy-gun in the shuffle, but responded with a sharp blow with his knee to Dwayne’s solar plexus. The impact pushed the air from his lungs and sent sharp fingers of pain through his body.

  Somehow, he managed to bring his tanto about. He dragged the blade across Luc’s chest, slicing between his ribs. Luc screamed and punched Dwayne in the jaw. The impact knocked him away, giving Luc a chance to get to his feet. Dwayne shuddered in pain, unable to stand. His hands were empty. When he looked up, he saw the black handle of his knife sticking from Luc’s ribs.

  In the distance, he heard Kearny and Paul fighting the restored Grendel. They were no match for him, even with Dwayne’s help. For the first time in a while, Dwayne felt like he was going to die. Funny that the last time he felt that way, Max Hollingsworth was nearby. He was beginning to think that boy was bad luck.

  “You know, mon ami,” Luc pulled the blade from his body with a grunt. The wound dripped and sealed, Luc grinned. “If we were still human, I would be outmatched by you in such a fight.” He dropped the tanto and kicked Dwayne in the side. He groaned, though he really didn’t feel it. “Your race were bred for strength, so wrestling you would be like wrestling a horse. Or, perhaps, a mule?”

  Dwayne narrowed his eyes at him. Luc chuckled.

  “It is thanks to my gift from God that I am able to fight you in such a way.” He grabbed Dwayne by his vest and pulled him up. Dwayne swung at him, but it was weak and slow. Luc grabbed his fist and twisted. Through the pain, Dwayne wasn’t sure it was his own scream he heard, or one in the distance. “See? Now I am superior to you in every way, ami.”

  He hurled Dwayne into the stack of wood. Boards shattered and tumbled around him. Several slats of wood slid onto him as he crumbled to the ground. One of the boards cracked diagonally, leaving a sharp edge upturned in the pile.

  “You want to hear a joke, ami noir?”

  “Not really,” Dwayne’s voice was weak, and the words punctuated with spurts of blood that decorated the woodpile.

  “I’ll tell you anyway.” Luc drove his boot into Dwayne’s back, cracking his spine just above his hip. He screamed and jerked back, throwing an arc of blood from his lips and knocking away the shattered wood point. It landed unbroken-edge down with the point in the air. Dwayne couldn’t take his eyes off of it.

  “You are my first noir.” Luc climbed on his back. Dwayne was numb from the hips down. Luc grabbed a handful of his hair and held him up. His feet hit the boards at Dwayne’s side, and a metallic twang signified the drawing of a knife. “I mean, I have known others… not as friends but, eh... sometimes I meet them.” He put the knife to Dwayne’s throat. “I have killed Jews, Arabs, even a few Persians, but you are the first noir I have had the pleasure to kill. You should be honored, yeah? Thoughts, ami? Do you suppose once I have killed a noir, I can no longer, as they say, go back?”

  Dwayne looked up at Luc’s face, upside-down as he hovered over him. The grill of gold teeth was dirty with blood. Through waves of pain and shocking paralysis, Dwayne forced a smile.

  “Yeah, well,” the words were strained, but Dwayne summoned the strength to reach up and take Luc by his skinny white shoulders. “You my first Frenchman.”

  With that, he pulled the skinhead forward, flipping him into the wooden spike. The jagged edge tore through his body with a crunch, poking through his heart and chest in a fountain of red.

  Dwayne pushed his body up with his arms. Luc trembled on the spike, spitting blood and clawing in vain at the red protrusion in his chest.

  “Ya ain’t laughing now, are ya, mon ami?” He dragged his limp legs, only just then regaining feeling in them as his spine mended. “All impaled and spittin’ blood ‘n shit! Damn! Look at you!” He took Luc’s shaking face in his hands and looked him in the eye.

  Dwayne chuckled. “Now, I’m a’ tell you a joke. My grand-pappy Martin was a Black Panther.” Dwayne shook his head. “No, not one o’ them beret-wearing hippies… he was in the seventy-sixty-first under General George Patton… one o’ Patton’s favorite battalions! My grand-pappy told me all sorts of stories about breaking the German line at Siegfried, and leading the hundred-and-third infantry all up there in Hitler’s ass.” He laughed. ’Come out fightin’; that was their motto!”

  “What…is…your point?”

  Dwayne smiled and squeezed the sides of Luc’s face until his eyes turned red. “I guess you could say killin’ you be in my blood.”

  Dwayne’s fangs came out as his head dipped forward. The sharp points ripped Luc’s throat and filled Dwayne’s mouth with his blood. The dark flow pulsed into his body, filling his belly and fueling his regeneration. By the time he was done, Luc was limp and lifeless, while Dwayne was rejuvenated. With his returned strength, he twisted Luc’s head and tore it from his neck with a snap.

  He carried it at his side like a basketball as he rejoined the others in the clearing.

  “Where’s Grendel?”

  “He’s down,” Kearney moaned, limping. Paul stumbled behind him.

  “How you all do that?”

  Kearny threw a thumb over his shoulder. “Paul shot him in the head while he was distracted… choking me.” He rubbed his neck as Paul chuckled.

  “You cut off his head yet?”

  Kearny shook his head.

  Paul spoke with some annoyance, “We ain’t even sure if that’ll kill him. The bastard survived being burned alive! Who ever saw something like that?”

  “A’ight,” Dwayne said with a nod. “Paul, you drag him out of here before five-O shows up… the boss’ll know how to kill him. Bring the truck around to the back of the woods.” He looked over his shoulder as Paul walked away to follow his orders. “Where is he?”

  They heard a crash on the other side of the compound, followed by a scream. Dwayne and Kearny’s eyes met.

  “Think we should go help him?”

  Dwayne shook his head. “Naw, he can take care of himself.”

  Kearny looked at the head under Dwayne’s arm. “What the hell are you doing with that?”

  “I’m a’ hawk these teeth, dawg.” He pulled bloody lips back and tapped the golden incisors. “Gimme your knife!”

  Chapter Forty

  With a sideways chop, Boone slashed into Max’s side with a long dagger. Max recognized a golden eagle’s head on the pommel and a swastika on the hilt. A Luftwaffe dagger, he’d seen them in novelty catalogs and knife shops. He doubted that was where Boone got his. The tip ripped open his leather coat and tore into his flesh. The cut was deep and sent shockwaves of pain through Max’s body. He screamed and jerked away. Boone chuckled and licked the blood from the knife.

  Max held his hand to the wound as hot blood poured down his ribs. It felt like he might have punctured a lung, but he wasn’t coughing up blood so that was unlikely. Still, he’d come close. Blood ran down his side into his pants. He felt it in his boxers, over his pubic hair and thighs. Every movement seemed to tear the wound open further.

  “I wish I could smell that,” Boone lamented. The potion made his blood odorless. It didn’t make it tasteless, apparently. Boone had made quick work of the bloody dagger. Now the blade was shiny again.

  Max pulled out his knife with his free hand. He wouldn’t be able to get to his pistol before Boone was on him. He held the dark blade at his chest. The pain was mak
ing him stronger somehow. It was like the primal will to survive had overcome the weaker instinct to find a safe, warm place to bleed.

  Boone laughed. “You really think you can beat me in a knife fight?” He lunged forward and swiped at Max’s throat with inhuman speed. Max only avoided getting killed because he anticipated Boone’s attack before he finished his sentence. The wild swing put Boone off balance, making the return swipe clumsy. Max still had momentum from dodging before, so he carried that to safety until he hit a wall.

  The vampire lunged at him again. Max dodged, but took a shallow cut to the left shoulder. He almost didn’t feel that one. When he heard Boone’s knife hit the wall, Max reciprocated with an underhand stab to Boone’s kidney as he spun past. The cut tore open his side and splattered his legs with blood. Boone pulled his knife out of the wall and spun to find Max several feet away.

  “You’re better than I thought!” He showed his fangs. It actually looked creepy when he did it. Max thought most vamps just looked stupid when they showed off their fangs and hissed. Boone’s combination of milky pink skin over thick blue veins and sharp, pinprick black pupils was actually a little terrifying. “But you really think you’re going to beat me?”

  Boone started circling as though looking for a weakness in Max’s defense. There were a lot of weaknesses in Max’s defenses, but that wasn’t what he was waiting for. He knew Max was losing blood, and the more he lost the weaker he became. The second he showed a sign of faltering, Boone would roar in and kill him.

  “Yeah, you would think I was pretty tough compared to your usual opponents, little kids and old women.”

  Boone chuckled. “I was a killer long before I became a vampire, boy. I fought Mexicans in Texas. Hell, I helped catch Santa Anna!” He waved the knife in front of his face. “I learned how to knife fight from Jim Bowie.”

  “I doubt it,” Max mumbled. He feigned weakness to incite an attack. It didn’t work. Boone was too smart for that, but while he was watching Max’s face, he wasn’t watching his hands.

  He couldn’t reach for his gun. That would have been too obvious. If Boone thought he was going for a gun, he’d jump at him and knock him off guard. Since reaching for anything meant letting go of his wound, he couldn’t afford to reach for anything too far away. Instead, he found a small round tube in his pocket right below the bloody knife gash. He was able to get it in his palm without Boone noticing.

  “Believe what you want, Max,” He stopped circling. He must have seen Max wavering and assumed it meant he was about to pass out. It was a ruse, only this time he bought it. “But you’re gonna die a failure. We ain’t even the ones you’re looking for! That’s the real irony in all th—”

  Max blasted him in the face with pepper spray. It had worked so well on Skyler that he thought it might work even better on a more powerful vampire. Older vampires have a more acute olfactory sense. He filled Boone’s nose and eyes with the most powerful grade pepper-spray he could find, something like three-million SHU. It flooded Boone’s eyes and nose with foam and made the skinhead vamp scream, a satisfying sound.

  He continued blasting him as he advanced until the canister was empty, then dropped it. Boone screamed and clawed at his eyes and nose. He was too distracted to see Max rear back his arm and drive the tip of his knife into his temple. The blade slid an inch and a half into the vampire’s skull before getting stuck. Boone’s screaming stopped, and he fell to the ground.

  Max reclaimed his shotgun and stepped over Boone’s shuddering, bloody body. He’d be like that until Max pulled out the knife. Before he did that though, he unloaded two shotgun blasts into him, one in each shoulder. Then he put one foot on Boone’s chest like he was a cask of rum. With a pained grunt, he leaned over and pulled the knife from the vampire’s skull. He had it wiped off and put away when Boone’s regeneration worked away the injury. By then, Max had the barrel of the shotgun hovering between Boone’s eyes.

  The vampire smiled. “She’s not here, Max.” He chuckled. “You did it for nothing.”

  “I wouldn’t say that,” he replied, putting his finger on the trigger. “I get to kill you, after all. That’s certainly something.”

  Boone shook his body as he tried to get his arms to work. He trembled and looked into Max’s eyes with something that might have been interpreted as a plea for mercy. Max had already exhausted all his supplies of that.

  “The pipes are calling,” Max said with a grin.

  A dark form tackled him, knocking Max to the ground with a scream. He looked up and saw a burly, tattooed body on him. In the faint light from the fires on the other side of the building, Max made out the words Aryan Warrior tattooed in Old English script across his attackers head. A shotgun blast had taken a chunk out of his muscular arm, but it didn’t seem to have slowed him much.

  Dillon, he thought, just before a heavy, ringed fist struck his face.

  A pop in his jaw sent shivers of pain through Max’s body. The joint in his jaw still worked, Max knew because he was able to scream. It made his eyes water, and he imagined it would hurt for a while. Another blow, this one with the back of Dillon’s hand, slapped his head back the other way.

  Dillon roared, bringing his fist back for another blow. Then another, followed by a hand around his throat. Dillon must have been shooting it out with the vamps until he took a shotgun blast. He was smart enough to know he couldn’t match one of them in a fight, so he came looking for Max. Well, he found him.

  Max appraised the situation as fast as he could. Something pinned his arm to his chest under Dillon’s waist, he had something in his hand. Before the fist fell, Max realized he hadn’t dropped his shotgun. His finger was trapped between Dillon’s crotch and the trigger-guard. His other hand was free, but his pistol was in the holster in the small of his back.

  Dillon had a gun though, a Sig Saur in a nylon cross-draw holster on his belt, unsnapped. Max grabbed it and pulled it fast. Dillon stopped when Max put the barrel to his chin.

  “What have we learned?” Max asked before pulling the trigger. Dillon jerked back just as the shot when off, though not enough to evade damage. His jaw exploded, covering Max’s face with his blood. He let out a hoarse gasp as he tried to stand. Max felt something moist and spongy land on his face. It was Dillon’s tongue. He dropped the Sig and slapped it away with a shriek.

  The skinhead still had him down, but not pinned as tightly as before. Max got his finger into the trigger guard of his shotgun and pressed the barrel against Dillon’s thigh. He squeezed the trigger. The silenced shot burst through his flesh, causing the burly fighter to jerk back and scream. His blood poured over Max’s chest, lubricating him as he wiggled away from the shuddering skinhead. When he was far enough back, he drew his pistol and unloaded three rounds into Dillon’s chest.

  Dillon screamed, but didn’t fall. He looked gruesome with his jaw hanging off his face, but he didn’t stop.

  “Why won’t you die?”

  He crawled towards Max, holding his bloody leg with one hand and reaching out with the other. Max fell back and put the end of the laser sight right between the N and the W on his head. The fragmenting round disintegrated the upper half of Dillon’s skull. A bloody, brainy mess splattered the ground and layered Max’s legs with thick red and gray goo.

  Max staggered to his feet. His hands shook as he searched the ground for his shotgun. He found Dillon’s Sig and tucked it into the back of his pants after decocking it. Pumping the shotgun with a bloody hand, he ejected the spent shell and looked for Boone.

  Gone, replaced by a bloody smear on the ground. Max panted and looked around, holding his wound. The woods were like walls, and even the faint glow of the fire couldn’t penetrate the Ozark darkness. Boone could be anywhere by now. His arms wouldn’t heal for a bit, but his legs worked fine. That meant he could run, but not much else. Unless he found someone to feed on, it would take long enough for Boone to heal for Max to get to the kids and go.

  “Some other time, Danny-boy.” Ma
x staggered into the compound. He had a feeling Boone was close enough to hear him.

  His night-vision goggles were broken, so he had to feel his way around in the dark. As expected, he tripped over Janice’s head. Fortunately most of her blood had soaked into the wood, so he didn’t get very messy. He had enough of his own blood to deal with.

  Once in the chemical storage room, he vaguely remembered where the flashlights were kept. After finding one, he turned it on and activated a few more for extra light. He was getting dizzy, but the upside was the pain had numbed. That wasn’t going to be an issue for long.

  The room had a plastic utility sink on the floor. Max turned on the water and took off his coat and shirt. The room was stuffy but still a little chilly, and every move he made seemed to pull the wound open and made him cringe, which made his numbed jaw throb. He rinsed off his shirt and wrung the bloody water from it, then splashed cold water on his wound. It hurt like hell, but was nothing compared to what he was going to do next.

  He opened a brown bottle of hydrogen peroxide, set neatly with a dozen others on a nearby shelf, and poured it over his wound. He groaned and almost jerked the bottle away as little white bubbles foamed up around the hole. Now that it was clean, well cleaner, he was able to gauge the extent of it. It was only three inches long but wide, like a mouth. No sooner had the bubbles stopped then blood started oozing. Max splashed more cold water on it then added the rest of the peroxide.

  Next came the fun part. The well-stocked larder had an ample supply of iodine. Blue, actually purple, iodine was the chemical of choice for most meth manufacturers, but povidone iodine worked as well, it just made the meth crystals kind of brown. But, it was easier to get. Max took one of the dark glass bottles and twisted off the top. He soaked his t-shirt with it until it was dripping and brown, took a deep breath, and pressed it to the wound. He didn’t even remember starting to scream, it just vanished in a wall of searing. Yellowish-brown mixed with his blood and gushed over his belly and side. He fell to his knees, shaking and struggling to hold the cloth to his wound. If someone had told him he was on fire, he would have believed them.