I Kill Monsters: Fury (Book 1)

by Tony Monchinski

  It was the way of things, part of the deal. This new generation of his kind, however, was challenging the established order.

  Not that Rainford considered himself a conservative or a reactionary creature. Change in and of itself was not to be feared. Rainford had embraced this city and the cosmopolitan centers of western Europe, the best he felt humans had to offer.

  And thus it was that predilection, habit, and nostalgia had driven him back to North America for what he conceived of as his final years. He had been here for the Independence. He had returned here after the excesses of the Terror made France inhospitable. With the War Between the States he had left again, and only a conflict the scale of which was unimaginable to the minds of the men and women drove him from the Continent. The poor fools had marched off to war in August of 1914 and thought they’d be back in their homes by Christ’s Mass. More than fifteen million of them never returned.

  Rainford was content to live out the rest of his days in a city he had watched grow. From a former Dutch colony to the center of English political and military operations against the patriots, to a jungle of concrete and steel structures seeking to outbid Babel in their reach to the heavens, Manhattan and its sister boroughs had afforded Rainford and his kind the protection of anonymity amid millions. It also provided an abundant and ready food supply.

  So, feeling the weight of his years and travails, Rainford had repaired to New York for what he conceived of as his dotage. Here he was largely unknown, even to his own kind, unless he chose to reveal himself. To those to whom he was known, he was feared. The mere mention of his name, or the name of his brother and sister, was enough to produce fear and respect in the cognoscenti. The cognoscenti, those in the know, though there were fewer and fewer of them these days.

  The younger generations of his kind, lamented Rainford, had no sense of history. Either of their own or the history of the species they lived symbiotically with. Which went far in explaining how children of the night could war on one another amidst a world that would see them all dead.

  But Rainford was not allowed to remain alone. They—the Europeans—had sent their envoys. Rainford had wanted nothing to do with them, but to turn these visitors back was to risk a confrontation that would ultimately prove detrimental to all concerned. Better to do what was asked, and in time the interlopers would return from whence they came, and Rainford would be left with his port and his books to while out the remainder of his days.

  Which is how he now found himself sitting in the presence of that vile and cursed creature, the Albanian Kreshnik, and its minions.

  The room was dank and cavernous and echoed with the unseen drip of water from some pipe. Rainford sat in the center of the room in a garish chair, a stage theater throne stolen from who knew where. In his days, Rainford had dined with kings and royalty. He had eaten off the crème plates designed for Catherine by Wedgewood and sat on jewel-encrusted, golden thrones. For all this, he was not a thing that craved the trappings of ceremony or affluence. In fact, his years had instilled a disdain for those who looked contemptuously upon themselves as social betters. Yet he wondered if those that had provided this seat for him had done so to belittle him, providing a mere theater prop for a creature of his years and experience.

  “Please don’t kill me,” the woman on the floor begged.

  She had been young and comely once, even strikingly so. Rainford’s grey-blue eyes told him such. In his times he had had many like her. Service to his kind had drained her of her youth and her beauty, leaving her ashen and anemic. That was another aspect he detested about this younger generations. They did not care for their things.

  There was terror in the woman’s eyes, above the fresh slice in her cheek.

  She groveled at the feet of the Albanian, who stood there in his rain coat and hat. That hat, thought Rainford, who did not consider himself overly snobbish, what poor taste.

  In the shadows around them dozens of eyes watched the unfolding. Few of these were known well to Rainford. Over three centuries he had embraced a near perfect isolationism. Then these had appeared in his city. They served the Albanian and when Kreshnik had sought out Rainford they had been with him. In the strictest hierarchical sense that was supposed to govern their kind, the Albanian served Rainford, so those turned by the Albanian and his slaves were also in the service of the dark Lord.

  But Rainford did not trust the Albanian. Again, part of it was the lack of a sense of history. Kreshnik was vicious and cruel and even, Rainford would grant him, cunning, but his overall intelligence was questionable and his allegiance was perhaps better left unquestioned. In centuries past, Rainford had served; he had served even when he’d had his own doubts. Now that he was a standing master, the expectation should have been that the youngers would serve and abet his own existence until the end of his days. But this younger generation…Rainford found himself looking upon them much as he looked upon human beings, as a separate species.

  “Please don’t kill me,” the woman begged again. Rainford was surprised and pleased that she was addressing him and not the Albanian, her master.

  “My dear child, who did this to you?” Rainford asked her. His tone was soothing. He meant this woman no harm. Her fate had been sealed the moment silver had polluted her bloodstream, for all intents and purposes poisoning her for all others.

  “Th-they were men,” she stammered, looking down at the ground. “Many men.”

  She spoke about them as if, like Rainford or Kreshnik or any of the other children of the night gathered in the gloom, she did not share their humanity. Human men and women often willingly gave themselves to Rainford’s kind, their blood slaking his hunger, their dreams and aspirations to share his existence. But this one in front of him, groveling at the knees of Kreshnik, she was all too human.

  There were humans, Rainford had known many, who lived the lives of vampires, abjuring the day, imbibing blood, though they themselves never bore the mark. Like Kreshnik’s wives.

  “Did these men have names?” the Lord Rainford inquired.

  “B-Bowie,” she stammered, “and Boo-Boone.”

  There was a low murmur among those gathered in the gloom. The latter name was not unknown to their kind.

  “Boone,” mulled the dark Lord.

  “We found one of their vehicles a few blocks away,” a voice spoke from the dark and a vampire stepped forward into the light. The creature was extremely thin and gaunt. It looked like it had not fed in some time. Rainford stared at the thing. Its name was Lein and it served Kreshnik. Yet it often sought to curry favor with Rainford, which reassured the centuries-old creature that not all of the younger generations followed the Albanian and his kind blindly; that some recognized and respected true power in its mighty and dark incarnations.

  Lein held up a plastic bag in which a shotgun shell nested.

  “Our people are scouring the databases for the prints, my Lord.”

  “Very well. Needless to say, if there is a match I want to be informed immediately.”

  “Of course, my Lord.”

  Sycophant, Rainford mentally dismissed Lein. The dark Lord knew that if this emaciated thing thought the Albanian could once and for all usurp his own power, it would not be as deferential.

  “And you,” Rainford spoke up and those in the dark stepped back slightly, which pleased him. “Was it this Bowie or Boone who sullied your flesh?”

  A shadow detached itself from Kreshnik, stepping forward hesitantly. It mumbled something.

  “These ears have heard centuries, child. You must speak up.”

  “Boone,” the burnt thing spat out the name. “The one called Boone.”

  “And you allowed him to do this to you?” Rainford almost couldn’t conceive it. When he was a child and then a younger, people spoke of the children of the night in horrific awe. Their anger was legendary and their wraith was feared.

  The wounded vampire looked from Rainford to Kreshnik and then down at the floor.

  Rainford a
lmost couldn’t conceive that this child of the night had allowed a human being to disfigure it in such a manner. Almost. This younger generation struck Rainford as effete and louche, as degenerate.

  The dark Lord shook his head in disdain. “What do they call you, child?”

  The appellation was meant to belittle and demean this time, and it did, adding further embarrassment to the pain and misery caused the creature by a human being.

  “Shane, my Lord…”

  “Speak up!”

  “My name is Shane, my Lord.”

  “Your wounds will heal, Shane. But the humiliation this human caused you will never completely fade. There is only one way of addressing it. Do you know what that is?”

  “Revenge, my Lord?” Shane’s voice trembled between fear of Rainford and hatred for the human, Boone.

  “Revenge? No, child. Justice. Revenge is subsumed in the domain of justice. What is justice, if it is not an exchange? This man, Boone, who took from you…you long to take from him, do you not?”

  The insanity in Shane’s eyes intensified. “Yes, my Lord.”

  “And you,” Rainford turned his gaze from the burnt Shane to Kreshnik, who was already looking at him from under his hat. “You stood by and allowed this to transpire?”

  The Albanian. What monstrosity was this thing Rainford’s Eastern European brethren had created in their laboratories? Genetic manipulation that allowed vampires to walk in the light of day? The twenty-first century meeting the dark ages, science wed to myth.

  Kreshnik whispered something in reply. It spoke in a lisp Rainford associated with the aristocracy of the Ancien Regime. Where those men and women and their courtiers had been weak and their elocution affected, this thing facing him was monstrous and too young to have witnessed pre-revolutionary France.

  Rainford had been a formidable opponent in his day, but he was old now and rapidly weakening. He was a creature who had long ago ceased to know fear, yet he wondered, if push came to shove, did he have what it took to end an abomination such as this thing before him? Rainford spoke over a dozen languages but he rarely understood what Kreshnik said. The Albanian, however, seemed to comprehend Rainford. And, what was more, it still obeyed, however grudgingly.

  “Boone.” Kreshnik whispered the name and Rainford understood.

  “Yes, a name I am hearing too much of these days.” Rainford shook his head in annoyance. “You understand,” he addressed the kneeling woman, “that the moment this man Boone touched you with that silver you were rendered useless to us, yes?”

  He didn’t wait for her to answer.

  “As we speak there is silver coursing through your bloodstream, in and out of your arteries and veins. A miniscule amount, yes. A negligible amount to one of your kind, yes. But not to ours. You do understand this?”

  “Please, just let me go—I’ll never tell anyone—”

  “I am not concerned that you will ‘tell anyone’.” Rainford smiled. “After all, who would believe you?”

  She looked up at him and there were tears in her eyes, streaking down her face.

  “You entered service willingly, did you not?”

  The dark Lord thought again how she had been fetching once, this one, beautiful.

  “Please—”

  “Did you not?” The dark Lord’s voice remained calm.

  “Yes, but—”

  “Circumstances do not allow for buts or whatfors,” he declared. “Circumstances allow for what is. For what has been done, has been done. And what has been promised, has been promised. And what has been promised must be delivered. Surely, you understand all this?”

  She lowered her gaze and her shoulders shook as she sobbed uncontrollably.

  “Look to me, girl.” She ignored the dark Lord.

  He repeated the request, and again, she wept but did not look upon him.

  “Finish this then,” Rainford bade the Albanian.

  Kreshnik pulled the glove off one hand a finger at a time, revealing a cadaverous, vascular-blue hand. There were whispers of anticipation from those gathered. Its fingers were long and slender, almost feminine, each ending in sharpened claws an inch and half long.

  “Look to me…” Rainford’s voice had trailed off to a whisper. She would not comply. There was nothing to be done for her.

  The crowd gathered in the dark was silent in anticipation. Somewhere in the gloom, water dripped.

  Rainford looked away as the Albanian reached down and, with his remaining gloved hand, pulled the woman’s head back by her hair—

  “No, please, ple—”

  —and slashed his other hand across her exposed neck, her throat opening up and blood spilling in thin rivulets and then a flood down her chest and shoulders. The woman shuddered and grabbed at the hand that held her hair but Kreshnik snarled and held her out away from him.

  She shook and bled out and was dead a minute later.

  Kreshnik held his hand up to the light and contemplated the blood under his nails.

  One of the human women who served him as a wife emerged from the dark and knelt before him, drawing the hand down to her mouth. She was dressed partially in the habit of a sister of Christ, her head covered in a white coif and wimple, the black veil and white underveil pulled up to reveal her lean, pallid face. She wore garters and stockings and, aside from this and the head garb, was otherwise nude.

  Rainford watched as she suckled first one and then another of the Albanian’s bloodied fingers. Disgusting. As a second and then a third similarly-dressed concubine joined the first, Rainford rose from his sham throne and walked off into the gloom.

  As he departed, those cloaked in the dark came forward, shedding clothing and inhibitions.

  This younger generation…Rainford shook his head, caring less if anyone saw him do so. Decadent. Given to the pleasures and perversities of the flesh. After three hundred and twenty six years of existence, sex didn’t mean what it once had to the dark Lord. The steady drip of water was lost amid moans of ecstasy.

  9.

  6:25 A.M.

  “Should we wake him up?”

  Boone made low, plaintive, broken sounds in his sleep, caught in the grip of some nightmare. Santa Anna watched the big kid shudder.

  “Should we wake him up?” Jay repeated his question.

  “Who, Boone?” asked Bowie. “Nah, let the pup sleep…”

  The back of the panel truck was packed with the four men and the cases of blood and cash.

  “Looks like he’s having another nightmare,” noted Jay.

  “Sounds like,” agreed Santa Anna. The Ithaca 12-gauge rested across his legs.

  “That’s no nightmare,” wagered Bowie. “What you’re witnessing here gentlemen is a nocturnal emission. Boone’s dreaming of all his steroids and his bench press.”

  “I go away for almost ten years,” said Santa Anna, “and shit still don’t change.”

  “How’s that?”

  “You still ain’t funny. And by the way, what the fuck is this shit we’re listening to?”

  Light FM was piping into the back of the panel truck.

  “This is none other than Sir Elton John,” noted Bowie, “commemorating the lovely Princess Diana herself.”

  “Oh shit,” said Santa Anna. “You’ve got to be kidding me. This song was fucking bad enough when it was about Marilyn Monroe.”

  “Are you kidding me?” asked Bowie. “The original was a classic.”

  “No, Santa Anna’s right,” said Jay. “Marilyn was trash. The Kennedy brothers used to run a train on her—”

  “When DaMaggio wasn’t,” added Santa Anna, “but I don’t think that makes her a whore. Woman enjoyed her body, that’s all.”

  “Let me guess,” offered Jay, “you got daughters, right?”

  “Why you be askin’?”

  “Because only a dad with a little girl at home is gonna come up with some bullshit justification like that.”

  Santa Anna scoffed.

  Jay was the shortest man
in the van at barely five and a half feet, a dark skinned Hispanic with a Caesar haircut. He continued, “Listen, Bowie—your footsteps will always fall here along England’s greenest hills? How the fuck does that compare to your candle burning out before your legend did? Mierda! What kind of bullshit is that?”

  “You know who you’re talking about here, right?” asked Santa Anna.

  “Princess Di?” Jay shook his head. “Fuckin’ Brit intelligence whacked her. You watch. It’ll come out, mark my words.”

  “No, Elton John.”

  “Elton John killed Di?” Jay looked puzzled. He lit a Moore and inhaled. “De que estas hablando?”

  “No, man,” Bowie shook his head. “You’re bashing my boy E.”

  “Who gives a flying fuck about Elton John?”

  “Sir Elton John,” corrected Bowie. “Sir.”

  “This guy, Santa Anna,” Bowie looked to Santa Anna and feigned indignation. “No taste. ‘Who gives a fuck about Elton John’?”

  “He’s queer, ain’t he?” asked Jay. “And you know what, Bow, quite honestly, your own little infatuation with ‘Sir’ Elton here is a little fruity if you ask me.”

  Santa Anna nodded his head, “True that, but what’s even weirder is you analyzing the lyrics man…”

  “Oh, you never analyzed lyrics before then?”

  “Not Elton John’s.”

  “Lo que sea.”

  A thin line of drool connected Boone’s mouth to the floor.

  “Sir Elton John,” said Bowie. Then, trying his best to open a can of worms, he asked Jay, “Speaking of infatuation. What’s with this new lady in your life, Jay?”

  “Mierda.” Jay took a long drag on his Moore and held the smoke. When he let it out he spoke. “She’s…she’s nothing like any other woman I ever met before.”

  “Sounds like someone’s in L-O-V-E,” Santa Anna said to Bowie.

  “I can’t put it in words, man,” admitted Jay. “She’s…she’s just, I don’t know, different than all the others, right?”

  “Different how? She got three tits?” asked Bowie.