I glanced to the house and considered the proposition. I’d never been offered money to kill before. Well, not unless you count my days in the military. I shrugged. “Why not.”
Brock smiled. “I say no holding back.”
“Wait, we’re not just going to kill the father?”
His smile broadened. “Why stop there? We can clean out the house entirely.”
I stiffened slightly. That seemed a terrible waste of perfectly good food. “And what of your employers’ beloved?”
He shrugged. “She’s a slave. Surely she’s in some barracks behind the house.”
I contemplated the consequences. “You’re not worried that a massacre here will cause the locals to investigate the incident more thoroughly?” I could see the gears turning in his head. “It would be a shame if you couldn’t stay in your new home because the populace were seeking a vampire…” I allowed my words to sink in.
He sighed slightly and nodded. “Perhaps you are right.”
“So,” I said, “we smother the old man. Make it look like he went in his sleep. We feast on a few of the house slaves, drag their bodies out to the swamps and feed the gators. In and out, nice and quiet.”
He nodded. “I just really wanted to leave a mess for the young man to come home to.” His smile was finally gone. It’s because of him that I never trust a man who smiles all the time.
His hand reached out and pulled the gate open. “Shall we?”
THE HOUSE ITSELF was quiet. There were many rooms but they were unlocked and easily identifiable. We passed through a drawing room, a study, a formal dining room, and finally found the rear stairs. They were dark and narrow, the servant’s entrance to the sleeping chambers.
The first bedrooms we found were empty. They were furnished but modestly; not opulent like one might expect, based on the grandeur of the lower levels of the home. We crept silently onwards to the center of the upper floor; there were no shadows to cling to. The grand staircase from the first floor opened to a broad, carpeted landing.
We slipped as quietly as we could to the other side and found only two doors. A soft snoring came from behind one door, and we felt we had found the master of the home. Brock slowly opened the door; we could see two bodies in the large bed before us.
We easily identified the father and I clamped a hand over his mouth and nose. He awoke with a start, his eyes wide as he began to kick and flail. The young woman in bed next to him stirred and quickly turned. Brock grabbed her by the head and gave it a quick snap.
It was then that I realized she was black. I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach, but held on to the man’s face until he lay still. I continued to hold his airways shut while his body twitched and jerked. I knew that he was dead, but when a human is suffocated, they continue to twitch for some time.
My eyes never left Brock while the man struggled. I watched him gingerly lift the young woman’s nude corpse from the bed; he laid her on the floor. Once the man had quit struggling, Brock pulled the sheets tight and straightened the covers. If he was to have passed peacefully in his sleep, his bed wouldn’t be tossed about.
Once we had staged the body, we searched the house for valuables, collecting hundreds in cash and jewelry. We left through the back. Brock carried the woman’s body and we deposited her in the swamp as planned.
I DECIDED TO explore Charleston a bit before leaving for Boston. We read of the untimely death in the newspapers and I had this morbid curiosity that had to be satisfied. I waited for the young heir to return and claim what was his.
True to his word, he returned, and his first order of business was to sign the deed to the Charleston home to Brock. Still, I lingered. My fears soon came to fruition when the young man returned yet again and asked Brock to elaborate on the details of his father’s death.
The young girl who shared his father’s bed was the woman he had intended to run off with. Brock left out the part about snapping her neck. Instead, he claimed that she had left his room to make him a late night snack. Upon her return from the kitchen she’d found him dead. She then panicked and fled from the house, a presumed runaway.
The young man was stricken, and intent on finding her. Despite her having shared his father’s bed, he still wanted to be with her. I wasn’t sure if it was a sign of weakness or strength, but having loved and lost, I felt it was a cruel deed keeping the truth from him.
The money we pilfered from the house was enough to purchase passage back to Boston and left a pretty sum in my pocket. At least in a private passenger compartment, I could draw the shades and sleep away the day.
But now, here I stood, staring at what well could have been the very same house. There were the twin lions, crusted with decades of wear and dirt and a stone archway crumbling at the mortar joints. The gate, however, had been freshly painted, but with the same historic design.
My eyes stared up at the entrance; electric light now shown where oil lamps had once hung. If it weren’t the same house, then somebody had built an exact replica and placed it here at the end of a barely maintained cobblestone street.
I put on my blinker and slowly pulled out of the intersection, my hands turning the steering wheel to the right and driving around to the rear of the neighboring property, where I hoped Loki now hid.
Chapter 9
THE HOUSE COULD be glimpsed from the road, though thick vines now grew all over the iron fencing, obscuring it from view. I circled the property twice looking for a discrete way in. Eventually, I parked the truck about a mile away and walked to the property from the rear.
The mansion itself was grand and had been well cared for over the decades. Three stories, large columns, wrap around verandas, manicured lawns, the very essence of opulence in a very old fashioned setting. I couldn’t understand how the mind of the wealthy worked. Mega yachts, skyscrapers, exotic cars…and an old plantation house in the deep south? Was it a vacation home away from the hustle of the big city? Was it a tax write-off? Was it one tiny piece in some larger business deal? Who knows?
All I knew for sure was, somebody had to be inside because the dozen armed men walking the property was enough protection for any head of state. Only a heartless lesser god would force his security forces to wear dark suits in this ungodly heat. I almost felt sorry for them. You could smell the sweat from a half mile away. I knew that their blood would be thick and far too salty for my tastes.
I couldn’t help but draw a parallel to the house that the Council occupied the time my misguided sense of justice caused me to overstep and betray, (read “massacre” here) my own kind. They were so similar that they could have been designed by the same architect. I sat hunched in the bushes partly expecting the same layout within, but I knew that wouldn’t be the case.
I could almost smell death coming from the home, and my mind continued to replay my experience with Brock. Why the images chose now to resurface, I cannot say. Simply seeing the house again shouldn’t have stirred such misgivings, yet here I sat, reminiscing over things that I could neither change nor would if I could.
I turned from and went back to the truck. I would definitely need the cover of darkness to get any closer to the house, and that was hours away.
The walk back seemed to take longer, or perhaps it was just that melancholy feeling of remembering Brock. You don’t often hear of other vampires in the world and even more seldom do you hear of their passing. But Brock was flamboyant in his activities and drew much attention from Charleston’s elite. I’d heard that he had worked his way into their inner circle and got lazy. He forgot who he truly was, that monsters are generally not admitted into polite company. Finally somebody within their ranks staked him.
In my circles, we watch out for specific newsworthy circumstances that might endanger our lifestyles. I remember hearing that there had been a marked increase in missing person cases combined with rumors of immoral acts with married women…women who were married to men of means. Rumors of this kind were nothing new to this decadent r
egion, especially with the crowd that Brock had been running with. No one had tied the activity to Brock specifically, until, however, one particular rumor struck a chord. It was said that a certain slave girl, a supposed runaway, had surfaced on the edge of a swamp.
A cursory investigation indicated that her neck had been broken cleanly. The lack of predation allowed the authorities to determine to whom she had belonged. Of course, word made its way to the new heir, and it was said that he lost his grip on sanity.
Did he put the pieces together and determine that Brock was responsible? Not much of a stretch. Did he then begin the rumors that Brock was partaking in cardinal sins with taken women? Whether or not there was any truth to that, his reputation began to be questioned and it eventually led to his end. How his true nature was discovered remains a mystery, though knowing him as I did, I would venture to guess he had become careless and progressively arrogant, perhaps even revealing his own secret as a boast.
By the time word of Brock’s demise had come to me, many decades had passed and any trails would have been quite cold. It wasn’t that I felt the need to enact revenge for the death of another vampire, I just felt a morbid curiosity toward the case. I was, after all, involved. I have no doubt that had I not been there, he would have created absolute carnage in the house. The walls would have been painted with the blood of his victims. Would that have saved him in the end? If he had killed everybody and smeared their blood across his naked body while he bathed in their entrails, would the carnage have been so overwhelming that the new young master wouldn’t dare attempt going after such a madman? Or would the loss of his beloved have sealed Brock’s fate regardless?
One could go crazy trying to follow through the countless “what ifs” in life. I had enough problems without inventing new ones or reliving old ones that I could neither change nor affect. The past was the past. Best to leave it where it lay.
I RETURNED JUST past the witching hour. It was nearly 2AM when I approached the house from the rear again. I could see the guards rolling their heads around on their necks, trying to stretch away their fatigue. It seemed that more than a handful were missing. Perhaps sneaking a nap while they should be on watch? Or perhaps the guards were heaviest during the daylight hours.
One guard leaned against the rail of the porch and the bright orange glow of a cigarette illuminated his features. I could see the plume of blue-grey smoke as he exhaled and I could tell by his heavy sighs that he was fighting to stay awake.
If any of these guards had been on duty during the day, the heat would surely have sapped their energy. To work at night as well? Too stressful for a human body.
I approached low and slow, sneaking from shrub to shrub, using shadows to conceal myself from their ever watchful eyes.
It took entirely too long, but once I reached the edge of the wrap-around porch I peered over the edge of the planking. The smoking guard was leaning against the rail still, his cigarette dangling from his hands as his head rested on his forearms. The steady rhythm of his breathing told me that he had finally given in and fallen asleep. The fact that he was still on his feet told me that it wasn’t the first time he had assumed such a position.
I pulled myself silently over the edge and my hands hovered on either side of his head. Guilt played across my mind for what I was about to do. It didn’t last long.
I grasped the sides of his head and with a quick twist and upward movement, snapped his neck cleanly. I’m not even sure he fully woke before he died. His rifle fell to the thick bushes below the rail and I gently pulled him back to the wicker rocker, sitting his remains nicely upright in the chair.
A movement at the other end of the porch caught my attention and I quickly assumed the dead guard's previous position along the rail. From my peripheral vision I watched as the other guard stepped into view, turned to see my silhouette, then slowly made his way back across the side of the house.
There were too many for me to remove them all. There were four guards on the porch below, at least two above and from what I could tell, two more were randomly patrolling the grounds of the estate.
I sighed as I considered my options. I’d need to remove enough of them that I could make my escape without being injured. I highly doubted that any of them carried silver bullets, but one lucky shot to the brain could put me down long enough for them to realize what I was and remove my head. If they burned my body afterward, it was definitely game over.
I’d heard stories over the years of vampires being decapitated and their bodies dumped close enough that their heads actually reattached. They slowly healed from their wounds and enacted revenge. I don’t know if that is possible or not. It could be one of those things that vampires tell themselves to screw up their courage. It could also just be another myth in the long list of lies surrounding my kind.
I made my way to the back of the house and pulled the screen door open slowly. Of course, it had to creak and the spring that would normally ease it shut was missing, allowing such a slamming noise that I expected every guard on the property to converge on my location before I could cross the threshold. I waited for the shit to hit the fan, but it never came. Either my overly sensitive hearing and fervent desire to remain silent artificially amplified the sound or the guards didn’t care if the door opened.
I slipped inside; the darkness was no problem for my predatory eyes. They adjusted immediately and I made my way through the small mud room and into the kitchen. It had the look of a centuries-old kitchen, but had been upgraded with modern appliances. I’m sure it was a real pleasure to live in such a place. Too bad I wasn’t shopping for a house down here or I might toss an offer to Loki before I wrung his neck.
There was one guard sitting in a wingback chair in the main room. He had oriented the chair so that he could see anybody approaching across the yard and he had only to kneel beside the window to shoot them with his nifty fifty Barrett before they got close enough to do any damage.
Unfortunately, I did not approach from the lawn and he met his demise the same way the smoking guard had. I left him in the chair, his eyes gazing toward the ceiling. I laid his rifle to the side of the chair and turned for the staircase.
Luckily none of the stairs creaked under my weight as I stepped quietly to the second level. The smell of death; that cloying, unmistakable odor, grew stronger as I climbed higher. I hit the second floor landing and went first right, then left. The bedrooms were empty, but the two guards on this level stood on a small balcony just outside open French doors, their eyes glued to the property beyond. Neither man heard me approach from the rear.
I tied both men to the support posts closest to their station. From the grounds below, they would appear to be leaning against the posts for support. At least, that’s what I hoped for.
I slipped back inside and continued my way up to the third level. There were no guards up here which was strange. I wondered why Loki would allow himself to remain unguarded when he knew somebody was after him. I followed the smell of death and found myself at the master bedroom.
Loki lay upon the bed, a cold sweat beaded across his brow. His breathing was labored and I spotted a gauze wrap stained with blood. He was the source of the stench.
I stepped into the room as quietly as I possibly could. The meat sack he wore was obviously dying but he was still a god. I didn’t want to chance his coming to and knocking me through a wall. That would surely call his remaining guards to arms.
“I’m surprised it took you this long.” His voice was soft and raspy.
I stood stock still, studying his unmoving form. His eyes were barely open, but he was aware of my presence. I reached into my coat and pulled the short sword, feeling it vibrate slightly in my hand.
“Will you at least answer me one question before you snuff the spark from my soul?”
I squared myself and gave him a curt nod. “Of course.”
With great effort he attempted to sit up on the bed. He exhaled hard and his eyes appeared sunken and dar
k as he turned his face to me. “Obviously, you know who I am. I have no idea what weapons you were using, but they are slowly killing me. I’ve tried to remove…whatever this is. But each time we get close, it seems to burrow deeper inside.” He coughed slightly and I saw blood on his lips. That tiny effort caused him great pain and I actually felt sorry for him.
“What is your question?”
He gave me a slight smile and nodded. “Who sent you? Why do they want me dead so badly?”
I inhaled deeply and let it out slowly. Did it matter if I told him? Would it change what was about to happen? I decided it would not. He didn’t appear to be in any shape to defend himself.
I lowered the weapon and approached his bed slowly. I shrugged. “Angels.”
He hiked a brow and gave me a surprised look. “Truly?” He coughed again and I could smell death increase its grip on him.
I nodded slowly. “One came to me. He offered my soul in return for…this.”
He raised his brows higher. “Your soul?” He chuckled slightly and shook his head. “And you believed this…angel?”
I felt my chest tighten. What game was he playing?
“Yes. My soul.”
Loki pulled himself up higher in the bed and sat upright. He studied me for a moment then smiled again. “You don’t have your soul?”
“I am Vampire.”
“Ah.” He nodded, understanding. “And you think that if they can somehow shove it back inside you, that…what? You’ll be whole again? That you can enter Heaven and live happily ever after?”
I shook my head. “Their heaven means nothing to me. I will enter Valhalla and feast with my brethren.” I squared my shoulders. “I pray only to the Allfather, Odin and your brother, Thor.”
Loki’s eyes widened and he choked as he tried to laugh. “You’re one of ours? Oh, that is rich, isn’t it. Of course you would be.” He coughed a bit of blood up and spat it across the room. “You’d have to be, otherwise, how could I truly be killed?” He groaned and I saw his hand press slightly on his bleeding wound. “You’d have to believe in me first before you could damage me like this. Obviously they know that.”
Hunter II Page 8
