Nocturnal

by David Paul

  “Our Dark Father has brought us together tonight. We know the truths about the universe. We praise the Beast. The Beast gives us freedom and pleasure. The Beast gives us life without sacrifice. The Beast gives us what we need to live. We will drink from the overflowing chalice of blood.” Carver raises his arms high above his head. “Do you seek the dark pleasures that only the flesh can quench?” Carver asked.

  The crowd roars, “Yes,” uniformly. The audience is in tune with Carver’s words. They are believers in the Beast. They rejoice in unholy praise.

  “Are we here of free will to seek truth?”

  “Yes!” The crowd roared.

  “Are we gathered here to enjoy the flesh?” Carver asked. He seems to be playing up to the crowd.

  “Yes!”

  The followers are gaining momentum.

  “Will we eat the flesh?”

  “Yes!”

  They cry louder than before. The crowd is totally engaged.

  “We are all hewn from the same flesh,” Carver said. The doctor pinches the skin and meat on his forearm, and he shows the crowd. “Man, woman, and beast are the same when we bring the flesh together. The flesh is our family. It is our lifeline. It will set you free from unjust oppression.”

  The ceremony resembles that of a bad evangelist on a Sunday morning, cable-access television program, only with obvious scenery differences. The false prophet works his audience into chaos. The crowd is sexually aroused. The air pulses with twisted sexual tension. Some worshipers are slowly groping themselves while entranced by their speaker. They take his every word as Scripture. The devout minions of the Beast praise their dark savior.

  “Partake in your deepest desires,” Carver said. “For, I will never deny my children of what they truly deserve. The flesh is yours. Partake!”

  The followers disrobe and fornicate wildly without shame. Some cover themselves in the blood of a slain goat that one of the followers was nice enough butcher for the crowd. Others drink the blood. A twisted orgy erupts that would put Dionysus to shame. Women are taking on multiple sex partners at once from both genders. Men are fornicating with men. Every perverse and filthy act is exploited openly in the group. Load moans are heard throughout the crowd. Carver partakes in the flesh of Kaye Miller. He touches her on the altar in front of the sexually charged crowd. Devin is using Carver’s body like a flesh puppet to do his dirty deeds.

  “I’ve seen enough,” Rawley said. He sets the sniper rifle down on its collapsible bipod and calculates ranges. “I want to crash this party before the girl gets raped or butchered.”

  “Let’s get them while they are all still fucking around and totally distracted,” the detective said.

  “I agree,” the vampire stated.

  Rawley is lying on his stomach and fixing on targets through a massive scope affixed to the rifle. Two nice weathered boulders offer Rawley and Detangelo some cover. Only the rifle’s silencer peeks from the darkness. Several of the followers are standing guard on the far outskirts of the ceremony. The closest are roughly a hundred yards away from the team. Rawley decides the order in which he will fire upon. His goal is to take out the guards furthest away, and then work his way up and through the rest of the crowd.

  “Are you ready to do this?” Rawley asked. Rawley pulls back the bolt of the semi-automatic sniper rifle, adding a live round into the chamber. He awaits an answer. “I am.”

  “I’m ready,” the detective answered.

  “Wait,” David said. Everyone looks at him in silence. There is a rustling in the woods behind them. It sounds like someone is near them. A few seconds pass. There is a faint sound of trickling water that only the vampire can hear. David disappears into the darkness. The vampire can smell a human in his proximity.

  He happens upon a guard urinating behind a tree. The guard is dressing in a flowing, black silk robe. He is armed with a large hunting knife resting on his thick belt in a worn leather sheath. The guard is unaware of David and the team. David creeps up from behind him. The vampire covers his mouth and bites down hard into his flesh.

  He takes a quick rejuvenating drink from the unsuspecting guard. The thirsty vampire couldn’t wait to get his hands on someone. The smell of all of the blood in the air was driving the vampire insane. His bloodlust was growing, and he needed to feed. David drains the guard of his blood until the guard collapses. David leaves the body on the ground, out of sight. The vampire has a small stream of blood that dripped down his chin.

  David rejoins the group.

  “What was it?” Rawley asked.

  “It was just a straggler.” David said. The vampire wipes his chin. “He is no longer a threat to us.”

  “Are you ready?” Rawley asked.

  “Do it,” the vampire said.

  Xavier Rawley smiled. He has been ready for all of his life. Rawley has been dying to get another crack at Devin. The man loves his job. Tonight, he will work overtime. Rawley takes a bead on a cloaked guard standing on a small cliff overlooking the dark ceremony. He squeezes the trigger gently. A moment later, the guard’s head explodes, and he falls forward headless and unnoticed.

  “Good night,” Rawley whispered.

  The silenced rifle makes nary a whisper, and another guard is dead with the same fate seconds later. The red mist of their disintegrated skulls is the only indicator of the intrusion on the ceremony. Up close, only the quick cycling of the weapon’s bolt makes a brief, muted mechanical sound under the moonlight.

  “Jack,” David said. “Listen to Rawley and stick by his side. I’m going down there.” The vampire vanished out of their sight and into the night.

  Rawley sits back behind his rifle and eliminates cultists one by one with frightening precision. Detangelo is his makeshift spotter using a night vision scope with a built in range finder to help him acquire targets. None of the followers have caught on about the sniper, and they carry on with their sordid business. Rawley changes the magazine in the rifle, snaps back the bolt, and sets his sights on another victim. The detective hasn’t said anything about killing innocents. The game plan is to take out as many targets as possible before they can realize what is going on.

  “Follow me,” Rawley said. “We need to find another position fast.” They both make their way along the ridge to a different spot. The layout of the ceremony is perfect for long-range work. They couldn’t have asked for better positions to snipe from. It was almost too easy.

  David swiftly appears behind another guard, covers his mouth, and bites deeply into his neck. The guard never saw it coming. The vampire is that good. He’s had plenty of practice in his time. The man never makes a sound as his blood is drained from his body. David quickly pulls the corpse into the thick woods and vanishes from anyone’s sight with lightning speed. A feeling of exhilaration rushes over David. The bloody drink energizes the vampire further. David is flying on a blood-high. The vampire moves to another target.

  “How are you making out, David?” The vampire doesn’t respond to Rawley’s inquiry, and the rest of the team hears a faint sound through the communication system that resembles a bone cracking in half. The vampire was in the process of snapping the neck of an unsuspecting worshiper.

  “Doing just fine,” David whispered.

  Rawley sizes up some of the guards on the furthest end of the clearing. They still haven’t realized what is happening. The sounds of the orgy seem to be quite loud. Various moans and screams meld together into a symphony of carnal pleasures. One hooded guard decides to masturbate while watching the orgy. With a swift shot through the heart, he falls over dead with his dick still in his hand. Rawley really enjoyed that one and got a kick out of it. He moved onto another target.

  A few more fall without incident, and Rawley is putting on a shooting clinic like a Marine sniper. Rawley hasn’t missed a shot and thins the herd with silenced one-shot kills. The vampire holds up his end of the bargain and disposes his prey efficiently under the cloak of the night. Just as everything seemed like it was
going too perfect to be true, a cultist screams. Her scream isn’t one of pleasure. She happened to look up, and she saw a guard’s head disintegrate. Several others begin to look around, and now they know something is wrong.

  The wild orgy seems to be breaking up.

  “The party is over,” Rawley said. He looks at Detangelo. “Now we have to clean up.” The message goes out over the radio alerting David as well. The cop is waiting for Rawley’s command.

  “Roger that,” the vampire responds.

  Rawley takes two more quick shots, and two more fall by his hand. The bolt snaps back and locks rearward. The sniper rifle is empty, and heavy smoke comes from the red-hot chamber. Rawley definitely made a big dent in their numbers. In a fluid motion, Rawley stands up, folds the bipod, and slings the weapon.

  “Fuck it, Rawley,” Jack said. The detective has the machine pistol in his hand. Jack’s adrenaline is pumped. “Let’s go.”

  Rawley smiles and readies his shotgun for battle.

  The two make their way to the clearing via the ridge. Rawley pulls the pin on a grenade and launches it into the center of the crowd furthest from the altar. For good measure, he throws another grenade in the same proximity. They both go unnoticed by the charging crowd until it is too late. Seconds later, a major blast rips through the heart of the followers. At least a dozen cultists get absolutely mangled from the blast leaving a grizzly scene behind. Others take cover behind the stone kneelers. Others are incapacitated. Total chaos erupts, and most of the worshipers still have not seen where all the mayhem is coming from.

  Carver took cover behind the altar leaving Kaye Miller out in the open. Detangelo joins the festivities by lobbing a flash bang grenade right near the altar, and then he ducked for cover. A group of worshipers are made to feel very uncomfortable and disoriented as they are grounded by the flash bang. One of the followers begins to convulse wildly, and at first Rawley and Detangelo figured that the flash bang might have triggered an epileptic seizure. The man’s body shakes and explosively expands and contorts into that of a beast. It lets out a bone-chilling howl and begins growling deviously.

  “We got ourselves a werewolf,” Rawley said.

  Detangelo is completely silent because the last time he saw a werewolf was watching the movie, The Howling. The beast is impressive and intimidating. Razor sharp teeth and claws are visible from well over fifty yards as well as dense oversize muscles that almost seem to be artificial.

  The growling werewolf locks his intense yellow eyes on Detangelo and erupts into an explosive sprint right at the detective. The werewolf relentlessly tears apart a follower that happens to get in its way. The detective wastes no time and puts the red dot from the laser designator on the approaching werewolf’s body. He quickly fires the machine pistol, which rips controlled silenced three-shot bursts into the beast. Luckily, there are obstacles between the werewolf and the detective, which buys the cop a small amount of time. The slugs thrown from the sub-machinegun seem ineffective even though they are visibly ripping into the beast.

  The monster shows no signs of slowing down. He is almost right on Detangelo who has begun to panic. His short bursts graduate to wild full-auto mayhem, and his gun is now inopportunely empty. Everything appears to happen in slow motion, even though the werewolf is moving with outrageous speed. The werewolf takes a huge leap and is in position to land on Detangelo for a killing blow. The detective cannot reload fast enough, so Detangelo freezes and accepts his fate.

  A deafeningly loud blast goes off next to him, and a spray of red blood splashes across the detectives face and clothes. Just as the werewolf had gotten within a few feet of Detangelo, Rawley calmly took its head off mid-air with a single shotgun blast. Smoke is still billowing out of the shotgun barrel. The headless corpse of the werewolf falls lifeless at their feet and transforms back to that of a human form.

  “Are you alright?” Rawley asked. “I always put silver in the shotgun shells just in case.” The detective is rattled with ringing ears, yet Rawley’s heart is beating slowly as if nothing had even happened.

  “Yeah, I’m alright. I’d be better if I wasn’t covered in werewolf brains.” Rawley hands him a handkerchief that the detective accepts graciously, and the policeman wipes the blood and gore from his face.

  “Reload that thing,” Rawley said, “because they know we are here now.” Rawley looks toward the mob of angry worshipers rushing at them.

  Rawley immediately pulls the pins on two more grenades and throws them just ahead of the advancing mob. The two take cover behind the ridge, and the followers run right into a blast zone of heated shrapnel. Bodies and body parts are randomly strewn about everywhere. He throws another grenade with similar results. The close proximity of the crowd in relation to each other was making the grenades very effective, but they kept coming. He throws his last two and waits for them to explode. The remaining worshipers are almost upon them as they charge through the dense smoke.

  Rawley jumps from cover and absolutely snaps, going off on a bloody killing spree. The mighty Rawley uses a shotgun like it is an extension of his own body. He appears almost as a ballerina dancing gracefully across the battlefield while emptying hot buckshot into everyone in his path. He makes it looks easy. To Rawley, this is easy. The semi-automatic symphony tore through the crowd with efficiency. His whirlwind of death ceased momentarily when he reloaded the red-hot smoking shotgun in between attacks.

  Something comes over Detangelo. Deep inside his soul, a fire stirs, and he charges the ever-dwindling crowd. Detangelo unloads on anything that he can see. The detective is no longer worried about innocents as he drives high-velocity armor-piercing bullets into every opportune target. The laser-designator and the gun’s tame recoil characteristics make the weapon almost comically easy to use. Even Detangelo is making his work look somewhat easy, yet he is nowhere near as polished as Rawley. Rawley has done this before in more severe situations. Untrained humans are not much of a challenge for Rawley or the vampire.

  The team used timing to their advantage against the devil-worshipers. Most of the followers are barely clothed and unarmed, but some have produced bladed weapons. Detangelo is caught in the middle of a reload, and a cultist armed with a short sword is able to get in behind him. Just as the cultist is about to swing on the detective, David appears in a blur and drives his dagger deep into the base of his skull, severing the spinal cord. The man freezes up like someone flicked the off switch on his life, and he falls to the ground.

  The detective gives the vampire a brief look that was interpreted by David as a thank you. David yanks out the buried dagger from dead cultist’s brainstem and throws it at another oncoming devil-worshiper. The vampire charges his latest victim, removes the implanted dagger, and uses the bloody blade to stab two others nearby in one continuous fluid motion. David eliminates two men and a woman in less than two seconds and showcases his proficiency in killing. Centuries of hand to-hand combat experience show in his precise moves. The vampire does things that do not even look possible.

  The three warriors stand side-by-side as the remaining worshipers rush them. The head on attack by the followers offers a strategic advantage to the team. The team can retreat if they get overrun, and they are not being attacked from behind. The entrance of the large ridge mouth funnels the advancing cultists right into the buzz saw. The cult presses forward relentlessly.

  Detangelo empties the last bullets from his machine pistol and drops it. Its white-hot barrel and chamber are still smoking as he quickly draws his Glock pistol and peppers the dangerous crowd with 9mm slugs. The detective is no stranger to a pistol and does surprisingly well in close. Rawley has exhausted his supply of shotgun shells, and now he has a pair of matching pistols in each hand. They each flash a green laser onto his targets. Rawley is precise with his work, and he is making the most out of the twenty round clips in his pistols. With one-shot kills, Rawley can take out forty crazies without reloading. Victims find death coming from the business end of each pist
ol. Even under pressure, all of his bullets almost magically find the heart or the head. The occasional double-tap kept him honest.

  The vampire is using his dagger to create fatal puncture wounds in some, while slashing the throats of others. David could use his bare hands to kill, but he loves wielding a blade, and the steel feels comfortable in his hand. Over the centuries, the vampire grew very proficient with a knife. His attacks are swift and devastating. His victims find themselves stabbed before they have a chance to react. The silver blur of his blade is unavoidable. The bloodied bodies of the dead and wounded are piling up all around at the feet of the three warriors. This is helping the team because their attackers cannot get directly to them. The mob had to maneuver around a small wall of bodies. The extra second or two time-penalty was detrimental to their well-being.

  The worshipers will not stop rushing them because their cowardice would be rewarded with a punishment worse than death. They will die for what they believe in. Spent golden shell casings on the wet ground sparkle in the moonlight. A growing cloud of gun smoke is choking the mossy smelling air and is almost like a blinding fog. Every time a cultist jumps through the fog, one of the three kills them. The three fight valiantly until the seemingly never-ending rush of devil worshipers finally ends. The clearing is littered with carcasses, blood, body parts, and guts. The forest looks like a slaughterhouse.

  “Holy Christ, that was intense,” the cop said. Detangelo wipes more blood from his face. He rubs his eyes.

  “You did well, Jack,” Rawley said. Rawley pats the detective on the back.

  “If it wasn’t for both of you,” Jack said, “I would have definitely gotten killed.” Detangelo shows his appreciation with a sincere disheveled smile.