Bite This

by Michael Anderle

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Downtown San Jose, Costa Rica

  Giannini Oviedo was scared. This evening wasn’t like the previous night. She drove to a different part of town, one where the murders had happened. She parked ten blocks away and had carefully made her way towards the area where the bodies had been found the next morning, their throats ripped out.

  She hadn’t made it two blocks when she felt her skin crawl. She looked behind her and swore when she saw two eyes, glowing in the dark staring at her. The eyes were between her and her car.

  She panicked and started walking faster without thinking that each step she took, she was a step farther away from transportation.

  After five blocks, she could see a second pair of eyes when she glanced behind her. Unlike the previous night, no cars had been driving on the road. It was like the whole city had shut down and were hiding behind their doors.

  Now she understood why. The mace and taser in her hands were little comfort compared to the fear she felt. The story was that the people were killed by wild animals. She had been told before that you never ran from a wild animal as it would immediately chase you down. She didn’t have long enough legs to even consider trying to outrun a wild animal.

  When she saw the sets of eyes behind her, she calculated the animal was either very tall, or walked on two legs.

  Her heart was beating loud enough that someone standing next to her would hear it. If anyone had been willing to come with her that night. Even her best friend Enrique had told her she was crazy and she shouldn’t go out that night. Nothing she said would persuade him to go with her. However, she needed the story to move up at the paper, so she grabbed the mace and the taser and left him to go downtown.

  Now, she was sure she was going to die for her desire to get ahead. She started praying the prayers she learned during church as a kid. Hopefully, the ten years between this evening and the last time she darkened the church doors wouldn’t be held against her.

  There was a bone-chilling screech behind her, her mind lost it and she started running. When she looked behind her, she saw two figures loping towards her, both had eyes that seemed to glow a dull red and blood stains on their jaws and down their necks to shirts that had seen better days. They were easily catching up.

  She put everything she had into running and stopped looking behind her, it wasn’t helping and she didn’t want to slam into anything.

  That was when she noticed the three people a block ahead of her. Two had military weapons and the closest, a female, had pistols in holsters on each side of her chest and sword handles over her shoulders. She angled to run towards them.

  She heard the foot falls of the things behind her. They were getting closer. She started to hear the woman in front of her yell as she turned to look behind her again. Breaking the rule she had just given herself not to look.

  Bethany Anne yelled, “Get…”

  Giannini Oviedo tripped when she stepped into a small pot-hole in the road, falling to the ground trying desperately to protect her head.

  “Down.” Bethany Anne fired both pistols, three bullets at each of the Nosferatu’s heads. Both stumbled, falling as their ability to think left out the back of their skulls when .45’s blew chunks out of their heads. The most they could do as Bethany Anne walked up to them was twitch their limbs. Bethany Anne took out a sword and cut off their heads. Their twitching stopped. John and Darryl kept watch beside and behind them.

  She pulled out a small radio device. “BA here, two down.” She put the small radio back on her clip by her waist. She hated the short name, but it was agreed no real names on the radios tonight. Ecaterina had voted to have the guys use the ‘P’ names from the Washington DC operation, but John told her it was only good for one op. Bethany Anne replaced her spent ammunition. Her gun with the darts was in a holster on her hip. She was used to drawing the guns from the shoulder holsters so didn’t want to change anything with them.

  Darryl knelt down next to the woman who was shaking uncontrollably, the aftereffects of the adrenaline rush her body had subjected her to. He set aside the mace and taser to make sure she didn’t spray or taser them as they tried to help her.

  Darryl made sure she was ok, talking in a soothing tone. He pulled out a small packet of antibiotic cream and a sanitary napkin which he used to gently clean her wounds. After a minute, he was able to get her name.

  Bethany Anne cocked her head, she heard footfalls… Lots and lots of footfalls coming in their direction. She pulled her radio back out, “Hey G. Get your team over to our location, I think we have incoming company. You read?” She got back an affirmative. They were three blocks over. While Gabrielle could make it easily, she could only go as fast as their slowest runner, who was Scott as Eric was taller and had a longer stride.

  She clipped the radio back on. “Guys, we need to get her to safety, fast. Ideas?”

  John spied a metal dumpster and pointed, “There?”

  She followed his finger, “Works, let’s go.” Darryl picked up the woman in a fireman’s carry over his shoulder and they jogged together the half block. The dumpster had three bags of trash in it. John easily reached down and pulled them out.

  “It’s disgusting, “ He said, “But it will be better than being with us and the smell might protect her if she doesn’t make a sound.”

  Bethany Anne thought about that for a second, “Good point.” She grabbed her pistol at her hip and calmly shot the woman in the ass. The lady over Darryl’s shoulder started to say something, then she was completely out. John reached over and pulled the dart out. He tossed it to Bethany Anne who put it into a small pocket that protected her from the needles. John helped Darryl put the woman into the garbage dumpster and shut the lid.

  The guys could hear the Nosferatu at that point. Now, Bethany Anne could see the Nosferatu all racing in their direction, there were eight in this pack. She could hear Gabrielle and the guys coming up the side street.

  Bethany Anne commented, “I’m not sure this is going to be reason to even break a sweat.”

  John saw the eight Nosferatu and considered what she said. “Yeah, you might be right.” If John had seen eight Nosferatu running down the street late at night just a few months back, he would have soiled his pants.

  Gabrielle and the guys joined them as the Nosferatu slowed a bit when the reinforcements came into sight.

  Scott whistled, “Well, what the hell are we going to do? That’s only eight. Are you going to leave any of the sticky fuck-balls for us Bethany Anne?” Bethany Anne snorted.

  Gabrielle looked back at Scott. Even with her new moves and better body, she didn’t want to try and attack all eight by herself and Scott didn’t seemed at all worried.

  “Tell you what. If Gabrielle can’t handle them, I’ll let you finish them off, how does that sound?”

  Gabrielle just turned back to Bethany, “What?” She was looking right at Bethany Anne when the beautiful woman’s face lost her humanity and took on the visage of the destroyer.

  Bethany Anne turned back to the Nosferatu and spoke in a deeper, bone chilling voice, “Watch and learn, little vampire girl.” Gabrielle didn’t have a good retort for that before the destruction came.

  Bethany Anne’s hands blurred into action, pulling her pistols and shooting four of the Nosferatu twice in the head and two of them once in the head before jamming both pistols back in their holsters and reaching for her blades. The two front Nosferatu didn’t notice that their six compatriots behind them were sprawled on the ground for the last half a block. Bethany Anne started racing ahead to meet them as the two front ones continued running to get to the fresh meat. The left Nosferatu was five feet closer than the second one. That just meant it was the first one to have it’s head cut off. The second lasted a full half second longer. The two Nosferatu who had suffered just one bullet to their heads had made it as far as standing up before they lost their heads. The final four were twitching and screeching on the ground as Bethany Anne calmly
walked over and dispatched each one.

  She looked up, eyes still glowing red and fangs extended. She smiled at Gabrielle, “Did you learn anything?”

  Gabrielle just nodded. She learned how to cut a group of Nosferatu down to size before slicing off their heads and this woman was even more scary fucking dangerous than she had originally thought.

  They were able to draw out two more small groups of Nosferatu fifteen blocks away. Bethany Anne made Gabrielle work both small groups with two guys backing her up. The closest the Nosferatu got was a small rip in Gabrielle's protective vest before Scott shot it in the head and Gabrielle quickly dispatched it.

  Occasionally, they would see a person trying to peek out at the gun shots. After each fight, she radioed Bobcat who would give the street address to the police to take care of the bodies. After their first fight, she made sure to relay where they had dropped off the drugged woman for safety.

  They had cleaned out fifteen Nosferatu by the time they got back to the helicopter. It was a good trip back, everyone happy to have been in a fight that went so well.

  The second night provided more practice and the third a chance to capture a Forsaken leader.

  —

  Giannini slowly woke up in a small hospital room. Both hands had bandages over her palms and there was a lady in a suit reading some clipped together papers sitting in the corner.

  “Hello?”

  The lady had dark black hair, glasses and was probably in her forties.

  “Hello, Señorita Oviedo. How are you feeling?”

  “Drowsy, disoriented. Where am I?”

  “You are at the clinic near the police headquarters. I am Super Intendent Rodriguez of the Costa Rican Police. I am one of the officers in charge of the task force for investigating the missing persons and murders cases. Do you feel up to giving me an interview? I apologize for interrupting your rest, but we need to acquire as much information as we can right now. Time is important and don’t be embarrassed, let me know all of your impressions from last night.

  “Sure, sure.” Giannini hit the button to make her bed sit up. She wasn’t feeling bad, and the drowsiness was slowly receding. “Where do you want me to start?”

  “How about what time you went downtown and why you were on the road?”

  Giannini blew out her breath. “Well, the why is easy enough. I am a reporter for the Tico Times and I want to crack open a story to get my work seen. Being a reporter is a dog eat dog world, and if I can’t break my own story I will be stuck fact checking other people's work and that is boring me to death. So, I heard about the people disappearing and the murders.” She smiled over to Rodriguez, “You will be happy to hear that none of my contacts in the police force would tell me anything.” Rodriguez smiled. “So, two nights ago I went out and while it was creepy, nothing happened. I heard about the murders and decided I would try to find something out last night.”

  “You went by yourself?”

  “Yes, but not because I didn’t try to get some people to go with me. Even my best friend told me I was crazy in the head but I wanted a story.”

  As Giannini warmed up to telling what happened last night, she realized she had a story if the Super Intendent would let her write it.

  She continued, “So, I parked the car and was walking to the area where the murders were supposed to have happened. I probably had only made it two blocks before I heard something behind me. I panicked and started running away from the sound, which was away from my car as well. After a couple of blocks I could see eyes glowing behind me.”

  “Glowing?” The Super Intendent had been writing down Giannini’s story, but stopped to question her.

  “Yes, I could first see one, then two pairs of dark red eyes behind me as I was running. They were humans.”

  “Not animals?”

  “Certainly not animals.” Giannini noticed the Super Intendent didn’t seemed surprised to hear this, but rather was making sure that Giannini was certain of what she saw. “I was able to see them in the light. It was two people, but they had blood stains on their face and their shirts.

  “What happened then?”

  “As they got closer to me, I saw three people standing out in the middle of the street, two men and a woman. All had guns and were dressed in black. The men had military guns, rifles and the woman had pistols and I think swords.”

  “The woman had swords?”

  “Oh, certainly. The woman was the closest to me. She started to tell me something but I looked behind me and got my foot caught in a pothole or something and stumbled. There were lots of gun shots and then nothing. I was so terrified. One of the men, a black man, came over and helped me.” She looked down at her hands, “He cleaned up my scraped hands and then the lady said something about more coming. I was freaking out. The black gentleman threw me over his shoulder and then I felt something hit my butt, like they pinched me and then I woke up here.”

  “They shot you with a dart to knock you out. We believe they stuck you in a dumpster to keep you safe.”

  “I was in a dumpster?”

  “Yes, it makes sense in a way. They told us where to find you and we brought you here.”

  “Am I going to be free to leave?”

  The Super Intendent closed her notebook. “I’m told there is nothing wrong with you; however, I have to ask you to not write the story you paid a high price to get.” Rodriguez held up her hand, “I’m not saying that we can’t work something out. Your information is the first we have on what is happening. The team you saw last night are foreigners, they cleaned out a total of fifteen of these drug induced murderers.”

  “Who are you trying to lie to? I’m not the public that is willing to accept whatever you say compared to what I saw. Normal drugs do not result in people whose eyes glow red.”

  Rodriguez had to give this young lady credit, she wasn’t going to be pushed around with the ‘official’ line. “It is how I must talk about the situation. As I was saying, they killed fifteen of these things. We had a group of five of our police officers get attacked by one of them. We lost two of the men, another might not live and the final two are seriously hurt, but will survive. Our team is presently canvassing the neighborhoods to see if anyone will talk to us. So far no one is. They believe that if they talk to us, this other group of foreigners might either come for them, or worse not help them any more.”

  “Why are you working to find out more about them, don’t you already know who they are?”

  “No. However, you might be able to help me. While I can’t authorize you to write your story, I will give you greater access to what I know and you will be able to write some of what is going on. Enough that it will help your career. Are you interested?”

  “Why do you need me? Don’t you have people in the force willing to do whatever you need done?”

  “Yes, but they are part of the agency. If I use them, and this other group finds out, they might leave and we cannot risk that happening. But if they are followed by a reporter, what could we do about it? We have freedom of the press.”

  Giannini gave her a face which called that statement into question.

  “Ok, when we have a chance of our city going up in flames from everyone feeling they are not safe, we will not allow enflaming newspaper articles.”

  “I haven’t even written the story yet.”

  “Yes, but you would. The problem is that you have your own experiences backing up your story and people might start to believe you. We would be fighting in the streets at night, and fighting the people during the day.”

  “Actually, I understand. I’m not going to incite anarchy, but if I help you will you promise to help me? Not the police force, but you personally. Will you help me with this story and stories in the future?”

  Super Intendent Rodriguez sighed. Why were reporters always the hardest to work with? “Yes, I personally will help you when and as I can. This isn’t an agreement that I will tell you whatever you want, but I will help as my respo
nsibilities permit.”

  That was the best that Giannini was going to receive from the Super Intendent. It was more than she had yesterday and the best she could salvage from her brush with death.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Frankfurt, Germany

  Ivan had been surprised at how quickly Stephen had gotten Terry’s agreement to help. It seemed she had been terribly afraid for her life and had been surprised how easily Mathis had been rebuffed by Stephen in the club the previous evening.

  She was concerned when Stephen explained that she would have to invite him to her apartment, but he gave her his assurances that Mathis would not be allowed to bother her again. Ever. She decided to not ask any questions for answers she didn’t want to know. She knew that without Stephen’s help, Mathis would never stop stalking her and was afraid that she wouldn’t survive. If Stephen didn’t make this happen, she would leave town the next day.