“Where’d you find the money so fast?” the cop asks me as I pass.
“Your mother’s G-string.”
This is New York, and my insult barely fazes him. No one is raising a ruckus, so he lets me pass without further challenge. I take the next car headed to Brooklyn and grab the hand bar. I never sit on a subway seat, and no self-respecting person should. The car is crowded but thankfully far from packed. Had that been the case, I probably would have gotten out and clung to the roof. I store that thought away as a future option.
I search for the tiny spark of inner peace within me so I can make the trip without cracking someone’s head open. A Hispanic voice cuts through my tissue paper-like Zen, and I look to find a kid badgering the girl sitting next to him. I can tell she is not a native as she desperately tries to ignore the kid’s aggressive requests to “hook up”. He looks up at me and wrongly assumes I have developed some sort of interest in his activities.
“What the fuck are you looking at, puto?”
The girl looks at me with pleading eyes, obviously hoping I am going to come to her rescue. I could not give a shit about her problem, but I’m far less prone to letting the kid’s insult slide. It takes about one-tenth of a second for the back of my fist to flick from the hand bar to his forehead and back.
The girl looks a bit frightened at my heavy-handedness but squeaks out a thank you. I just grunt in reply, thankful that everyone has cut the volume of their inane prattling in half and is now giving me just a bit more space.
I take a deep breath when I finally climb back to the surface. Vampires don’t need to breathe to survive, but not doing so makes it impossible to speak and, more importantly, smell the things around you. I held my breath the entire way here to keep from gagging on the concentrated stench of humanity. Even now, the myriad smells are strong and unpleasant, but they’re tolerable.
The subway doesn’t run anywhere near where I need to go, so I start hoofing it across town. I don’t get tired, but the waste of time pisses me off. This is definitely the last time I forget to slip some bills into my pocket before I leave. I retrace my steps from last night, taking to the rooftops and alleys so I can run full tilt without attracting attention. I wisely choose to use the front entrance of the building where I shot Francis instead of making a potentially painful and embarrassing leap to the roof again.
Yellow police tape crisscrosses the doorway and surrounds the spot where I landed after my ignominious drop through the floor. I navigate my way past more tape as I take the stairs to the upper floor. More police tape cordons off much of the upstairs, sectioning off the hole I fell through and Francis’ blood spatters.
I have no clue as to where Francis hides out during the day, so my best bet is to try to track him down. It’s a bit of a long shot. Vampires have heightened senses, including smell, but we’re nowhere near being bloodhounds. My only hope is that, being a relatively new vampire, he hasn’t learned how to consciously heal his wounds efficiently.
I take a good sniff and start following his hasty exodus across the roof and down into the streets. He might have been running in a panic, but he’s kept his wits enough to avoid the populated streets and stuck to the alleyways. His retreat took him through the most run-down sections of Brooklyn, and I manage to follow the trail into Greenpoint. It’s not the worst the city has to offer, but it’s definitely a weak stone’s throw from it. The blood droplets have slowed, and it’s getting harder to find them. I’ve lost the trail twice now only to pick it up a block or more away, and it’s growing fainter by the step. I finally lose it altogether, but I’m sure I’m in the right neighborhood.
The block I’m on has plenty of places in which to hide out during the nighttime hours as well as some prime hunting grounds. Only an idiot hunts anywhere near his lair, but being an idiot is a prime factor in why Francis is on my shit list. I follow the sound of metal crashing to the ground not far away. A chain-link fence bars the entrance to a metal recycling company. Unless there’s a pit bull wandering around the yard, no one should be inside at this hour.
Gripping my sword in my right hand, I jump up, grab the top of the fence, and fling myself over to the other side. I crouch next to the fence and survey the area. This is as good a place as any to lie low during the night. The yard is a maze of cubed scrap metal stacked ten feet high like oversized children’s blocks.
I take a good, long sniff and detect a whiff of fresh blood. I had hoped Francis would take a night to lick his wounds and I’d catch him before his next feeding, but I don’t think I’m that lucky. I creep around a wall of stacked steel and peer between the rows. At the far end near the fence, I spot what looks like a body. In a perfect world, I’d find Francis taking a nap and dreaming about the days when he had functioning genitals.
However, this isn’t a perfect world, in fact it tends to kinda suck. The body appears to be that of a homeless woman Francis probably nabbed as she made her way to one of the nearby shelters. If he had stuck to these kinds of kills, properly disposed of the body, and wasn’t such a gluttonous little pig, I wouldn’t be trying to kill him. Nevertheless, he chose to do the opposite, so here I am.
I look up at the sound of shifting metal and see one wall of iron and steel lean inward just before it topples in an effort to crush me. Toward the end of the row I execute a long jump that would make Carl Lewis envious. The wall of metal crashes down just behind me, entombing the corpse Francis left behind.
I roll several times and hear the impact of something striking the ground inches from my head. Tumbling to a kneeling position, I bring my blade over my head and block the length of steel Francis uses to try to split my head like an insane Gallagher. I knock him to the ground with a leg sweep and buy myself enough time to get to my feet.
Francis, the little chicken shit, won’t face me in a stand up fight, rolls to his feet, and runs. He jumps up onto another row of compacted metal, but I chuck a muffler at him and knock him off the other side. My victory is short-lived. I take a few running steps before he vaults back onto the wall and hops over the fence.
I leap over the enclosure and into the street just in time to see him hurdle the fence surrounding the water treatment plant across the street. Francis lands inside the facility at the same time I reach the street. I snap off a round, and he yelps and slaps at his left upper arm where the bullet grazes him. The treatment plant is a big place, and I don’t want to lose him again.
He darts between the massive, silver tanks, and I lose sight of him for a moment, but my excellent hearing picks up the sound of his feet striking the pavement. His footsteps stop, so I slow to a walk and try to pick up his scent, but the wind isn’t with me. I can smell the fact he came through here, but not where he is currently standing.
Francis lunges at me from the dark cleft between two of the huge water tanks. I duck the swing, and the steel cistern rings like a bell when his bar smashes into it. He kicks out to the side, catches my thigh, and knocks me back several paces. I bring Shalonda up, but he vanishes past one of the water tanks and takes off running again.
I would rather not punch a hole in something holding a few hundred thousand gallons of water, so I check my shot and give chase. For a guy whose balance should be a little off due to some missing bits, Francis can still run.
He sprints across an open area and runs toward the man-made ponds. The grated metal catwalk shakes and rattles beneath our pounding feet. Francis hunkers behind a steel pipe sticking up out of the water at the end of the walkway set in the center of the pond.
I stop about twenty feet away. “Come out so we can end this, Francis. I’m tired of chasing you.”
“I’m tired of running. You shot my dick off, you bastard!”
“Come out and I’ll end your suffering.”
“Give me a chance. Fight me. No guns.” He waves his steel bar over the water pipe.
I slide my pistol into its holster. “All right, we’ll end this Star Wars style.”
“Technically, it�
�s Empire Strikes Back.”
“Technically, I don’t give a shit. Either way, it ends with you losing a lot more than a hand.”
Francis peeks around the pipe and stands. He hefts his bar as if he’s standing at home plate waiting for the pitch. I take two steps toward him. He raises his length of iron higher.
“Dumb fuck,” he says with a sneer.
Francis brings his bar down on the water pipe’s outlet valve and knocks the cap off. Water gushes out like a fireman’s hose at several hundred PSI, blasts me in the chest like a civil rights protester, and knocks me off the catwalk and into the water. I kick for the surface and look for Francis, but he’s gone. He probably jumped into the waterway feeding the treatment plant. Since he’ll never have to come up for air, it’ll be all but impossible for me to find him again tonight. He could swim the canal all the way to the East River without breaking the surface one time.
***
I’m hungry, wet, and crabby as hell, and the thought of getting back on the subway does nothing to improve my mood. I’ll have to walk a ways before I can reach an area where the cabs run. With any luck, I’ll find dinner somewhere between here and there. There’s certainly an ample supply of people who won’t be missed much, but like with any good restaurant, it’s all about location.
I travel the darkest, scariest streets and alleys in hopes of finding a straggler to pick off from the herd. My favorite is catching some guy in the midst of a violent crime. I like my meal to be rich in irony. I say a quick thanks to Lady Luck when I hear a muffled cry coming from a narrow gap between a pair of five-story buildings.
The alley reeks of trash, piss, and shit, and I’m forced to clamp down my olfactory senses as I step into the dark divide. Somewhere near the midway point, I pick out a pair of bodies. One is pressing the other against the wall with a hand over her mouth. Despite the overwhelming odors, I can still pick out the smell of perfume and a woman’s scent amidst the heavy city stench when I take a quick sniff.
I grab the hoodied assailant by the upper arm and fling him against the far wall. I take two steps toward him and freeze in my tracks when the thug drops his hood. In a purely instinctive response, my heart pounds in my chest and an overwhelming sense of fear and pure, unadulterated hatred infuse my body.
“Hello, Leonard,” Lesile greets me in a soft, French accent.
Lesile’s the bitch who turned me into a monster and tortured me for weeks in a twisted crash course to teach me how to be a proper vampire. For the past eighty years, my greatest desire in this world has been to cut this bitch’s head off and mount it in my loft, but now I can’t do anything but stare with my mouth agape like an idiot.
I turn my head when I hear her “victim” moving behind me. She is holding what looks like a 40mm grenade launcher and is pointing it at my back. I barely have time to mutter “what the fuck?” before it discharges like a giant party favor. Instead of paper streamers, half a dozen electrodes pierce the thick fabric of my trench coat before unleashing what must be half a million volts of electricity throughout my body.
The result is instantaneous. I lose all control over my nervous system and flop to the ground like a marionette with the strings cut. A black SUV comes to a screeching halt at the end of the alley and disgorges four men in full assault gear. A dozen more figures repel down the side of the building with masterful expertise. I summon all my focus, tear the electrodes from my body, and lurch to my feet. Lesile moves faster than my eyes can track. I feel her foot strike my chest before I realize she even moved. I slam against the wall with the force of a senior citizen’s car smashing through the front of a convenience store.
Before I can even think about countering, half a dozen more super Tasers fire and pump me with enough juice to fry an elephant. I’m back on the ground in an instant as every muscle in my body locks up with a steel grip. Fuck me. Just before I black out, I tell Lady Luck to eat my ass.
CHAPTER 4
It’s nearly impossible to knock out a vampire, but you can run enough juice through one to sever their link with reality. By the time I regain my faculties, I’m trussed up and stuffed in the back of what I assume is one of the SUVs. I can tell we’re moving, but I have no clue as to the direction. A hood covers my head, and what feels like some kind of old-school manacles binds my hands behind my back.
The cuffs must be about two inches wide and are attached by chains to my feet. I have no clue who these people are, where we’re going, or what they want with me. My biggest question is what is Lesile doing with them? Were these people working for her? Are they part of some goon squad? Lesile has always been on the fringe, pledging no allegiance to any enclave I know of. They could have killed me if they wanted to, so they obviously want me for something. Most people would be scared shitless in a situation like this, but not me. I don’t think it’s courage. I think I’m just too damn stupid to be scared. I do know two things. These people are not vampires, and I am well and truly screwed.
I can’t smell Lesile, so I assume she’s in another car. These guys are probably just minions, so I don’t bother to engage them. It’s unlikely I’ll get anything other than another jolt of electricity from them anyway. I’ll play docile until they slip up. Then I’m going to free the beast and put the fear of heaven and hell into them just before they die.
I mark the seconds in my head but lose count after a while, so I give up. That trick only works for short distances, and we exceeded it long ago. My break comes when we stop for gas. I can smell the fumes emanating from the pumps, but more importantly, I hear the DJ declaring 94.5 FM WPST as being the home of the best Top 40. That puts us traveling southwest and somewhere near Trenton.
Having a direction and distance isn’t much, but it’s something. Less than an hour later, I feel us leave the interstate when the G-force pushes me to one side of the vehicle as we speed down the long curve of an off- ramp. Our periodic changes in speed hints at the presence of toll stations, so I make the assumption we are on the New Jersey Turnpike.
Even if I’m right, it’s still not much to go on. But, like a puzzle, every piece counts, and the more pieces you get the clearer the picture becomes. An interminable amount of time later, at least two hours by my count, our road trip finally ends. My handlers pull me out of the back and drop me on the ground.
“I’m going to switch your chains around so you can walk. Make a move and you’re going to think you just got the chair. Got it?”
“Just make sure you secure them properly, because if I get loose I’m going to kill every one of you fuckers. Got it?”
Something jabs me in the back and thigh and shocks the shit out of me once again. My body is locked into place by my own muscle contractions as the guy I’ll call Sparky unhooks the chain running from my cuffs to my ankles. He removes one shackle, cuffs my hands in front of me, and reattaches the chain to my leg irons.
My handlers push me forward, warning me of the steps when we reach them, and guide me into a building. I detect the constant hum of what is probably an industrial generator or two, and the interior smells of fresh paint and drywall, but they fail to mask the musty odor of decay and years of disuse completely. I store each of these new puzzle pieces away for later use.
I hear the clacking of people typing on keyboards and the sounds of our footsteps echoing down the hallway. My hearing is keen enough I can get a guess at the length of the hall and the change in sound when we pass an open doorway or come to an intersection. We stop, I hear a door open, and I’m shoved into a room. I get a whiff of Lesile just before someone yanks the hood off my head. It’s all I can do to keep from throwing myself at her when I see her standing near the far wall with a self-satisfied smile on her face. I refuse to humiliate myself no matter how pissed off I am.
There are four armed men and Lesile in the room with me, but none of them speaks. I assume we are waiting for someone else to show up. My theory proves correct when a man in an off the rack grey suit strides in. He is in his forties and of average
build. His black hair is neatly cut, obviously the finest work of a poorly paid barber. Everything about him reeks of fed.
“Mr. Malone, I have heard much about you.”
“You didn’t hear enough; otherwise you would have killed me already.”
“Why would I do that?”
“Because every minute I’m alive is a minute closer I come to killing you and your boy band.”
The man smiles and gives me a disappointed shake of his head. “Are you a spiritual man, Mr. Malone? The pride of your heart has deceived you, you who live in the clefts of the rocks and make your home on the heights, you who say to yourself, 'Who can bring me down to the ground?' Obadiah said that in The Good Book.”
“And Jesus said unto the Pharoses ‘You’ll die slow but calm. Recognize my face, so there won’t be no mistake.’”
“I don’t believe Jesus said that.”
I shrug. “It may have been Notorious B.I.G. I get them confused sometimes.”
“Your singular wit is certainly proving true, but the ease with which we brought you in is unsettling. I heard you were a supremely dangerous creature, and that is what I need. If I have been misled, I’m afraid I have little use for you.”
“Oh, I’m supposed to be dangerous? As the director of this show, it’s up to you to provide the actors with the proper motivation. Let’s try this.”
I spin around and head-butt the man behind me with the force of a major-league slugger swinging for the upper deck. Without taking a step, I flex my legs, launch myself at the guy to my front, and catch him in the chest with both feet. The impact sends him crashing into the wall ten feet away. He hits it with a meaty slap and slides to the ground. Neither men are moving, nor are they ever likely to again.
Electrodes sprout from my body before I even reach the ground. The two remaining guards pump enough electricity in me to light up Times Square, and I start flopping around like a landed fish. Little wisps of smoke curl up from my body as I try to reboot my brain.
Blood Conspiracy (Brooklyn Shadows Book 2) Page 4
