Bloodlines

by Drew D'Amato

  This night he sat atop a small building, five stories high, perched similar to the stone gargoyle next to him. No wind and few people out tonight. It didn’t matter, he just needed one victim, and he loved Hollywood at night. The moon waned. His eyes could see for many yards with perfect accuracy, and at this height he could also hear what was happening below. In the alley two bums dressed in a few jackets were warming themselves by a fire in an old metal garbage can. He made out their conversation perfectly.

  “It’s going to be tough this year,” the white bum said to the black one. “People barely give us money when the economy is good, nevermind when it is bad.”

  “Yeah, I hope I get a few nights in the soup kitchen. Nothing beats the feeling of sleeping on a bed, ya’ know,” said the black one.

  “I ain’t slept on one in a few months, and that one was outside that somebody threw away.”

  “Oh, man there ain’t nothing like finding that.”

  “Yea maybe we should come up with some trick to do at Venice Beach for some cash. I saw some idiot over there who jumps on glass—barefoot—I’d do that for some money.”

  “Sheet, ya need a permit to get one of those spots. How weeze gonna do something like that?”

  How pitiful their talk is, Vlad thought. Two things have remained throughout the history of time—death and the poor—two things that Vlad had been able to avoid. Why would anyone want to go on living like this? Vlad always asked himself. Some of his best vampires used to be bums. If there was any human that needed a drastic change in their lives, they were the ones. There were two types of bums, the ones who have just never caught a break in life and the ones who were just plain losers. The latter do not make for good vampires, just good vampire food.

  A rat scurried along the edge of the roof of the building and stopped itself next to Vlad’s foot. The rat got a few sniffs in before Vlad grabbed it and bit into a good part of its mid-torso and internal organs. The head and tail were untouched but the nerves of the body made the rat twitch wildly. Vlad slowly chewed his snack as he looked down at the bums waiting for something, anything, interesting to happen.

  A white man with dark hair and a clean shaven face turned from the main street into the alley. Holding his black trench coat over his left arm and holding his briefcase in his right, he walked into the light of the fire. The white bum noticed him as he was about to pass him on his left.

  “Hey mister got anything you can spare, anything, just for a coffee?” the white bum asked the stranger.

  The stranger had his face ahead of him, but he turned it to his left. “Get a fucking job you bum!” he said, keeping his pace and turning his head back in front of him without a second thought.

  “Don’t be like that sir, please.” The bum stood dejected. “Yeah, well come back here and I’ll fucking kill you.” No response came from the man as he walked out of sight. The bum walked back to the fire.

  “I’m telling you, let me do the talking, they don’t fear or pity your white ass,” the black bum said.

  “They don’t fear you either, you black piece of shit. They just feel better giving to a black guy,” said the white bum. The two looked at each other, had a short laugh, and then got back to trying to keep warm. The small fire was dying and soon they would be looking for something to keep it alive.

  Vlad took another bite out of the rat, swallowing the head of it. His eyes were locked on the bums below as he chewed on the head of the rat. An old priest—about in his early sixties—in a black jacket with round glasses for his eyes and a black round hat with a two-inch brim on all sides—making him look more like a padre than a father—walked into the alley.

  “Father, anything, anything at all?” The white bum went back to the same routine.

  The priest stopped. This got Vlad’s attention. He waited to hear the truth, the truth he needed to hear that helped him to not have any faith. This man of God would show how big his heart really was as he would insult these two and walk away feeling that he was the better man. Identical to the businessman, identical.

  “Well, I could give a little but it won’t do much,” he said. He handed them each a ten-dollar bill. Both bills were the new ones, crisp, with Hamilton smiling wide. “I wish I could help you guys some more. If you men ever make it to Cypress Avenue stop by my church, maybe I can help you a little more.”

  “Thank you Father, we will,” said the black bum as he put the bill into his ragged coat pocket.

  “Good night men,” the priest said before he continued down the alley.

  Vlad noticed the two bums glowing. It was a toss up what made those two feel better: the ten bucks or being called men and not bums for the first time in a while. Vlad’s head followed the priest.

  “Interesting,” he said as he swallowed the bottom end of the rat in his mouth, slurping the tail like a piece of spaghetti.

  2

  Vlad decided to move west. After the display with the priest he would feel a little guilty taking the lives of those two bums. So he flew west over Dodgertown and the stadium. People didn’t notice the bat flying over the stadium, as they were too focused on the playoff game in progress. His destination was a place northwest of Echo Park near the Gold Room. The buildings weren’t so tall there, so he transformed into a bat and waited on the roof of the Bank of America on the corner of Echo Park and West Sunset. People would notice a man standing on the roof of a bank.

  The Gold Room had its share of young people and partiers, but that group also brought drug dealers. And that sin was the one tugging at his appetite. He did not want to get the junkies, he wanted the people who brought the misery and did it for a profit. Earlier, two bikers with leather vests, sunglasses, and bandanas walked into the Gold Room. If they came out within a few minutes he was sure they would be just the people he was looking for. And sure enough, they did.

  They didn’t just pop in for a beer, they sold some shit, maybe coke, maybe smack. Vlad could tell this group was used to busting up some bars and some heads inside it. He was pretty much sold on these two to be his treat for the night. One had an orangey-red mustache that went with his long orangey-red hair that shined bright against his black bandana and black vest. Stumper, his friend had called him. The other was Pauly, who had a black beard with long black hair. Pauly pulled out a joint from his jacket.

  Hardly fatal, Vlad thought. He did not feel this worthy of taking a life, but then again, he was hungry. He showed his mercy with those bums, but he was not about to start acting like a saint. Besides, he was sure this was not the only drug the two of them had on their person. Then something in the road caught his eye.

  The priest in the all-black outfit with the black hat stepped off the 704 at the bus stop on the corner of Echo Park and West Sunset. Father Anthony Pacami, an all-Italian Catholic priest. He crossed Echo Park and approached the Bank of America that Vlad stood on. Pacami noticed the two bikers who now had the joint lit and were smoking it. He glanced over at them long enough to understand the situation, who they were and what were they doing, but not long enough to stare. He turned his head and continued to walk toward the bank.

  “What the hell is a priest doing here?” Stumper asked Pauly.

  What the hell is a priest doing here? Vlad thought. At close to midnight it did not seem like a good idea for a priest to be walking around Hollywood. Then he watched Pacami take an inch thick, manila envelope out of his breast pocket. Vlad looked down and also noticed a slot in the wall of the bank. It was a drop slot for money deposits overnight, and it was at the end of the direction of the priest’s path. It was the only logical explanation, Vlad thought, that or the priest sold drugs.

  “I know what he’s doing,” Pauly said as he caught on, too. “He’s going to drop money in that slot, a lot of money.”

  “There was church today? No there wasn’t.” Stumper replied.

  “They get money from other shit besides mass. You see him taking that manila envelope out of his jacket? That’s money, fool. What the
fuck does it matter anyway where he got the cash from? You just ain’t got the balls to rob a priest,” Pauly said as he puffed on the joint and passed it.

  “Fuck that, I don’t believe in no fucking God.”

  Vlad got a small smile as he heard that.

  “I’ll do it, you think this is cool?” Stumper asked.

  “Just get him to run to the parking lot, we got a lot of our friends over there.”

  Vlad looked west down Echo Park and saw a large parking lot that had a few bikers on bikes waiting for their two friends. Vlad was going to like this. A game had started and he loved playing this one.

  Pacami made it to the drop slot. Written on the package was the proper information. Stumper hustled over to him and leaned against the wall of the bank staring at the priest.

  “Hey Father, you need any help with that?” he asked, but it wasn’t a question.

  “No my son, I’m all set thank you.”

  “Well if that’s for the needy, hell, I’m needy. Why don’t you let me have some of that?”

  At first Pacami did not want to believe he was being robbed. He wanted to think that maybe this guy was on too many drugs, too drunk and just had a bone to pick with God, or bitch about some priest that touched him in his special place when he was younger. How the Father wished that this biker only wanted to talk about religion this time. Pacami did not want to believe that someone could sink this low, to do something like this, to a man like him? Did the collar not mean anything anymore?

  Stumper moved toward Pacami. Out of fear Pacami ran backwards, toward Echo Park, toward that parking lot. Stumper walked slowly, knowing Pacami was walking right into their trap. Pauly trailed behind. When all three men turned off Sunset and down Echo, Vlad made his move.

  Vlad avoided making a sound as he landed right behind Pauly, transforming back into a human as he fell. Pauly never noticed him until a hand grabbed his jugular. Pauly had a smile on his face, before he felt a cold white hand upon his neck palming his larynx. Before Pauly could respond with a scream, Vlad ripped his jugular out from his neck with his right hand. Vlad put the Adam’s apple in his mouth and sucked on it like a candy. Some blood dripped down the right corner of his chin as he kept the jugular in his mouth like a kid with an ice cube. He walked slowly toward the man’s orange-haired comrade.

  Pacami had tripped as he tried to get away from Stumper and now found himself on his knees. His assailant standing over him, reached back to throw the first of as many punches needed to get a hold of the envelope. Vlad grabbed Stumper’s right hand before he could throw his first punch.

  At first Stumper thought it was his friend. He turned expecting to find Pauly holding him, about to tell him something like a warning, maybe there were witnesses. Instead he found a light skinned man dressed in black holding his arm and looking to fight. Before he could think of making his first move, Vlad made his.

  Time was not on his side here, this was pretty public. He spit out Pauly’s Adam’s apple and sank his fangs into Stumper’s neck. Stumper’s hands wrapped around Vlad’s neck trying to pull free, but it was a worthless effort. The hands soon stopped fighting, and at the end sort of welcomed the blood draining. After sucking out a few good pints he stopped. With his excess half-inch nails from his fingers he dug the four of them from his right hand into the back of Stumper’s neck near the left ear in a row. He ripped out all of the skin covering the front of the neck and ate it, eliminating all proof of the vampire’s incision. Vlad then dropped the body to the ground and walked toward the priest.

  The bikers in the parking lot started to notice some commotion and walked over to check out what was going on.

  Pacami lied on the ground in a half-assed fetal position. His legs were not totally against his chest. They laid a little crooked. He cried in panic, no idea of what he had just witnessed, but he knew he saw more unnatural events just now, then in all his years in the cloth. Vlad made his way over to Pacami. The yellow envelope lied on the ground next to Pacami’s hysterical body. Vlad walked over Pacami’s body and started to kneel. Pacami stopped his crying and started to stare at Vlad, frozen like a deer in front of a car—waiting for its unknown killer—as Vlad bended down. Vlad picked up the envelope. He walked over to the drop slot. His eyes stayed on Pacami, Pacami’s stayed on Vlad. Vlad put the envelope in the slot and shut the door. With a solid thunk as the slot door closed, the task that Pacami had set out to do this evening had finally been accomplished.

  “Your errand is over,” Vlad said. He smiled, hoping now the priest would feel safe, but then something came into his vision behind Pacami.

  Ten bikers of different size, small and large, old and young, long-haired and bald, one Latino and one black, had moved from deep in the parking lot and now found Vlad, Pacami, and their two dead friends. Vlad waited for them to make a move.

  “Well did this snack just turn into a dinner?” Vlad said low enough so that only Pacami heard it. Pacami turned his head to look at the bikers and then looked back at Vlad. Vlad looked down into the priest’s eyes. You might not want to watch this.

  “He killed Pauly and Stumper, and now he’s going after the priest,” a small, bald man announced. The group started to move forward. Vlad put his arms around his head covering all of him with his black leather trench coat. He disappeared and the black coat fell to the ground. Thirty rats appeared underneath the jacket. The rats scurried toward the men and went underneath their legs. The men turned around to see where the rats went.

  As the crowd turned, they found that there were no rats behind them anymore, just Vlad standing fifteen feet away, jacketless and with a small smile. He grabbed his two gold finish .50 caliber Desert Eagles semi-automatics that he had under his arms in holsters. He had a silencer on each of them. His bullets, painted silver—which didn’t matter much to these humans—cut the group of them in half. Two took a hit to their head, two took a shot to their neck, and one in the stomach. The one in the stomach started to slump down but was still alive, so Vlad put another two bullets in his brain. He put the guns back in their holsters.

  The five survivors stood there shocked. This guy just turned into a group of rats and then reappeared. Vlad knew none of them were a threat, but he couldn’t let any of them live to tell the tale. There were bigger factors at risk here. Vlad had to keep his existence hidden no matter what the cost. Humans didn’t need to know where he lived, and neither did Radu. The man to the left of him—a tall black man—told himself fuck it and brandished a knife from the back of his jeans. He rushed at Vlad, but Vlad threw one swing at him. He punched the guy square in the face so hard his nose caved in. Teeth fell out of his mouth and blood covered the lower part of his face. He fell back, dead on impact.

  Two long-haired men still standing decided to team up and go after Vlad at the same time. Vlad waved his right arm in the air, like an order to a dog, to the one to the right of him. An invisible force struck the man and he landed on the ground with the wind knocked out of him. The second came at his left. Vlad wrapped his left arm around his neck as he came in and tried to squeeze his head off. The biker got a good shot to Vlad’s gut, as he was in a headlock. The short, bald man who had spoken before tried to make a run for it. Vlad, with his free right hand took a gun out and shot the biker in the back of his neck. The guy fell down with a hole in his larynx and no more air in his lungs. Vlad put the gun back with his right hand and with his left finished twisting the guy’s neck that he still had in a headlock. He released him after he heard it snap and let the lifeless body fall. He walked over to the man on the ground who had just snapped out of the invisible force that hit him.

  The man started to lift his head up a little bit. Vlad kicked his face with his right boot. The back of the man’s head whipped against the pavement and smashed open. His brain broke into four big pieces. Vlad bent down and grabbed the second smallest of the pieces.

  “Thought for food,” he said to the last biker—an old, grey-long-haired man—as he put the piece in h
is mouth and chewed on it.

  The biker went over to the priest.

  “Who is this man, Father?” he asked overcome with panic.

  Pacami didn’t know. He had never seen anything of this nature before.

  “Here, take my crucifix,” Pacami told him as he ripped it off his neck, shaking in panic.

  The biker took the cross from the Father and held it in blind faith. Vlad did not flinch. The last biker did not have to be told that this was a monster of some sort. He had just killed his eleventh victim in no less than five minutes. The biker held the crucifix, his only hope. Vlad took out his handgun with the silencer and shot the cross right at the vertex. The biker dropped it.

  “I always liked the idea of having one survivor live to tell the tale,” Vlad said holding in a laugh. “But it’s between you and a priest, so I’d say you’re fucked.”

  Vlad punched his hand through the guy’s chest. He saw the life come out of the man’s eyes. Vlad left a gift inside the man. The body slumped to the ground. Vlad then went over, picked up his jacket, and grabbed some of the dead bikers who had died in the most creative ways. Pauly and Stumper, the guy with his face caved in, the man with his brains broken. He piled them up, with the last biker he killed on top. While his back was turned Pacami tried to run from Vlad. Vlad made a quick run and instantly had his arms wrapped around Pacami’s body from behind.

  “Where are you going, Father? Going to tell the police what you just saw? No, you’re coming with me if you want me to keep you alive.”

  He took Pacami and flew up into the air. He took out his gun and shot at the hole in the last biker he killed. He had left a grenade in the man’s stomach. The grenade exploded and all the bodies around it were blown to bits. Vlad and Pacami missed the explosion as they flew into the air.