by D. R. Perry
Supernatural Vigilante
Supernatural Vigilante Society Books 1-4
D.R. Perry
Supernatural Vigilante (Supernatural Vigilante Society Books 1-4) is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Sometimes both.
Copyright © 2018, 2019 D.R. Perry
Cover by Fantasy Book Design
Cover copyright © LMBPN Publishing
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The distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.
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First US edition, October 2019
ebook ISBN: 978-1-64202-530-9
Print ISBN: 978-1-64202-530-9
Contents
Be Counted
Body Count
Counting Costs
Counting Stars
Thank you!
Connect with the Author
Other LMBPN Publishing Books
Be Counted
Supernatural Vigilante Book One
Life sucks, and then you die. Sort of.
Valentino Crispo loves Mom’s Italian cooking, sun on the beach, and working for the Cranston Police Department. He loses it all after getting vamped. Now, he’s the newest vampire in Providence.
When a hitwoman apparently shoots his dad and one of Cranston’s Finest on the same night, Tino stops letting vampirism bite him. He’ll mix supernatural and PD skills to solve the crime, but he hasn’t got the hang of being a vampire yet.
The mystery of whodunit and why is tied up with Tino’s turning. The Providence vampire elders hate nosy vamps almost as much as new ones. Will Valentino stand up and be counted, or add to the body count?
Chapter One
I barely know anything about vampires, even after I got turned into one. Yeah, I know. That makes me sound like a walking stereotype. At least it didn't happen in High School or before I quit my job at Cranston PD to hang out my own shingle as a PI. But now everything's different in new and special ways. In other words, it sucks. Pizza and beer are right out of my diet plan. So are long walks on the beach at sunrise. I can't tell anyone I'm a vamp, so it gives me no extra cool factor with friends or game in the dating department, either. Which is bad enough anyway for a twenty-seven-year-old dude like me.
Sunday dinner with the folks isn’t the same as it used to be, either. And that’s where I am, in my parents’ downstairs bathroom glaring at an empty mirror while I try to figure out a fourth excuse about why I'm not at Mass every Sunday morning. Forgive me, Father, for I have been vamped. It's been a whole month since my last confession because I can't set foot inside Church. I used to be an altar boy, too.
“Tino?” Dad’s knocking at the door. I've got to answer him. He’s my father, and we’re Italian Catholics. Honoring our parents is just what we do. It's the same way for my best friend, Maury even though he's Jewish.
“Yeah, okay.” I run the water and rinse my hands so Dad doesn't get grossed out. It's not like I need to because I don't actually use the john anymore. All the blood we drink goes to fuel spiffy vampiric powers I haven't learned yet.
I come out of the can, doing the switching places shuffle with my old man and then swoop out of the way as Ma almost brains me with a plate of broccoli rabe, heavy on the garlic. It used to smell delicious, but now it only makes my eyes water. With blood. I hope she doesn't notice. Yeah, we don't cry regular tears without using one of those powers I mentioned earlier. She stops and blinks so hard I run one hand through my hair and then pat down the front of my shirt. When Ma looks at me like that, I always think I got something in my teeth even though I haven't bitten a veggie in a month. I look at my shoes so it's harder for her to see my eyes.
“You’ve been hitting the gym hard, huh, Tino?” Ma whisks the dish away, and I know her rhetorical question is as much of a front as that wiener joint in West Warwick used to be. Not the one you’re thinking of, that other one down past the Dunkin Donuts with the burnt-tasting coffee. Anyway, she knows something's up with me. Mothers usually do.
“Yeah, Ma.” I head back into the kitchen because I know that if I don’t, she’ll just give me a guilt trip later on for not offering to help cart everything out to the dining room.
I don't understand why the three of us have to eat in there on the hoity-toity glass table when the beat-up wooden hand-me-down from Grandma did just fine while I still lived at home. I didn't start the unliving thing until after moving out, which is good since Ma's practically psychic. Or maybe she's got honest to goodness psychic powers. I'm still not sure if that's a thing. What do you want from me? I'm new, okay?
“Thanks, Tino.” Ma hands me some hot pads I wish were thicker or maybe the size of Texas. “Please take the eggplant out of the oven. You’re a good boy.”
You’re probably wondering why I don’t have a problem with her calling me good boy like that. Italian Mamas sometimes talk the same way to their grown sons as they did when we were little. And yeah, we have tempers like you think but never really stay mad at family.
Anyway, Ma clicks away down the hall on high-heeled shoes she wouldn’t have worn a few years ago when I still lived in the basement. My eyes roll as I pile forks and knives on some napkins. The cloth kind, which are in the same drawer with the rest of the hot pads. But the only kind in there are those dinky flat ones, not the kind that actually go over your whole hand. The sound her shoes make in the tiled hall stops at the edge of the carpet in the dining room.
And that’s it. I can’t procrastinate any longer. At that point, I have no choice but to stick my extra flammable vampire arms into a hot oven. Ma expects me to, so I’ll do it. It's the decent thing to do, and I don't want to blow my cover. I holler back to the dining room, “Ma! Where’re the long oven mitts?”
“Use what you got!” I hear a tinkle of glass and a muffled thump and assume Ma knocked over a wine glass in the china cabinet or something.
I’m bending over the oven, and all I smell is eggplant. And garlic. Which means I have to stop myself from sneezing. All I feel is three hundred and sixty degrees of heat, which could make me blister like a white Russian on the Riviera. Why they don’t make oven mitts that go up to the shoulder, I’ll never know. Oh, yeah. Because vampires don’t cook. Or maybe they do if they were Gordon Ramsey before getting turned, but what do I know?
I reach in with the little square hot pads and grab the pan, thanking God that the vampirism makes me extra graceful and fast, even if I’m not breaking the sound barrier like that guy in red on TV. I get the pan to Ma's fancy-pants dining room as quickly as I can while still seeming human like my parents. After that, I set it down on the trivet Ma always puts out for bakes like the eggplant. God, I miss being able to eat them.
Remembering the breaking glass sound, I look around. But I don’t see Ma or any evidence of broken glass. I’m a little confused, but my mother’s always been like a ninja with cleaning anything up. It’s kind of unnerving sometimes. I shrug and leave the dining room.
On the way back into the kitchen, it happens. I smell blood. Ma never cuts herself, and she hasn’t this time. I see her going through the doorway from the parlor, carrying those fancy linen napk
ins and the utensils I piled up on the counter before. The blood smell comes from the bathroom where Dad is. So I stop outside the door. Not much else I can do, being a vampire and all. We smell human blood, and it stops us in our tracks for a second or few. Hunger is something we’ve got to be careful about, you know.
And after a few, it occurs to me that Dad has no business bleeding in the downstairs bathroom. He always shaves upstairs, and besides, I don’t smell any of his Barbasol. Another thing being a vampire tells me is how much someone is bleeding, and my father is definitely doing too much of that for something like biting the inside of his cheek or trimming a hangnail too close. I open the door just as Ma clicks up behind me.
Dad is on the floor between the sink and the john, clutching his right arm with his left hand so hard Ma thinks he’s had a heart attack. She calls 911 while I’m stuck staring there, realizing he’s been shot. I know right away the bullet’s still in him, too, although it smells odd. Also, I know he got shot from a distance and through the window, which now has a hole in it. My vampire senses help with that, but really it's the police experience that gives me knowledge of ballistics. Yeah, I used to be a cop. Quit when I didn't make detective, hence the going into business for myself thing I mentioned earlier.
And a couple of other clues I notice; Dad was either on the can or just getting up when they hit him. His pants are around his ankles, and there’s a deuce in the bowl with some paper. The indignity makes me narrow my eyes and curl my lip in anger. My fangs get extra pokey with a side of wanting to bite whoever did this, too. I can’t stand here and let someone get away with shooting up my parents’ house.
I don’t step foot in the can, don’t want any of my old CSI buddy Raph Paolucci from the Cranston PD to find evidence of vampires on my account. But I have to know who’d dare do this to my Dad, and I’m fast enough to catch them, maybe. I run out the back and around the side of the house, then look both ways like I’m considering crossing the street to cover the fact that I'm looking for witnesses. After that, I jump two stories up to the roof of the house I grew up in.
Being a vampire isn’t all blood-thirst and sun allergies. We get strength and speed like something out of those superhero shows you see on TV. We get to see like hawks, hear like German Shepherds and scent like bloodhounds. Exactly how good we are at that varies on an individual basis, but we're all leaps and bounds above regular people in those departments. Anyway, the bonuses seemed lame to me before tonight. Dad gets shot, and now I feel like they’re like some kind of freaking miracle. Except for the fact that undead vampires are definitely not welcome at Saint Mary's. I run across the roof without even worrying about balance or anything and leap to the one next door.
I don’t see the sniper, but I smell gunpowder across the street and three doors down. So I follow it, springing off Old Man Fitzpatrick’s roof to land on a tree branch the width of my wrist. Hurtling through the air, I tap the gutter with one toe to get some extra lift. It groans but holds, and before you can say blood I’m on the apex of the roof, looking down at the back of a head covered by a ski mask. The body has a petite build with wiry strength. The sniper is latching what looks like a saxophone case but smells like a gun cabinet. I leap.
As the sniper’s head turns, I catch a whiff of something perfumed. I’d know it anywhere, the scent my old High School girlfriend Kayleigh used to wear all the time; Anais, Anais. The eyes in the ski mask go wide. I can only just barely see them, though. I smell more oil and gunpowder and realize the sniper’s drawn on me. A side-arm because shooting a dude at close range with a sniper rifle's stupid. This hitwoman's smart. Yeah, okay. So that's a huge assumption. I know it's right almost immediately.
I’m dodging before I know it because if I hear the shot, it’s already too late. The sniper might not know I’m a vamp, might not have holy water or wooden shrapnel bullets, but I like my hide in one piece. This is my dad’s would-be killer I’m stalking here, and I don’t want to make a stupid mistake. The cops probably don't know about us undead people, but the less lawful organizations just might and keep it under wraps.
But the sniper doesn’t aim for me. The gun isn't loaded with ammo to hurt supernaturals, either. Instead, it’s a different kind of special round. The bullet hits about an inch from where my feet were before, but the flash-bang it makes blinds me all the same. My vision’s more dazzled and star-struck than that one time I saw Taylor Swift on Misquamicut beach. By the time it clears, the shooter is gone.
I bare my fangs and hiss up at the sliver of moon in the sky. I’m not being melodramatic; it’s instinctive, okay? Fire is something we vampires freak out about, and that light show sure looked like the beginning of a barbeque. I take a deep breath I don’t need because there’s just something refreshing about that. And then I look down to see if anyone’s watching so I can jump down from the roof already. Someone is, of course. Because my luck sucks to match my vampirism, of course.
There’s a lamp on in an upstairs window at Old Man Fitzpatrick’s place, and the twitch of curtain just before that light goes out means the old guy might have seen everything. I remember that he wears the dorkiest round bifocals in the known universe. That and the fact it’s dark out probably means he doesn’t know it’s me up here. But I get my undead ass down from the roof just the same. The police are coming and I don’t want them to find me up there. I realize I’ll have to disguise myself just like that sniper did if I want to do rooftop chases in the future. The bright side is, I love costumes. But I hate masks with the passion of a thousand fiery daystars.
I jump down between the house I was on top of and the one next door, landing neatly and mostly silent behind a forsythia whose yellow blooms are converting to green. Before you go getting the idea I’m a wuss because I know flowers, I’m telling you Dad’s a florist. It helped my popularity with the ladies in High School, but apparently not his with whoever was trying to bump him off. He's supplied funerals for a handful of underworld types over the last few years.
I check my shoes for roofing shingles and brush off my pants and sleeves just in case. After that, I round the corner of the house and head back across the street. I look down out of habit because I always used to trip over the curb on our side of the street before the vampination happened. Then I fall on my ass on the asphalt because I bump into someone.
“Thanks, Tino.” I hear the scuffle and plop of a flip-flop on pavement and look up.
“Thanks for what, Scott?” I blink at Old Man Fitzpatrick’s teenage grandson. At least his name’s not Patrick Fitzpatrick because that'd just be obnoxious.
“The good old knock-about.” He’s standing, but he hadn’t been just a few seconds ago. Scott sticks a hand out to help me up. I wonder why he’s wearing flip-flops and shorts with no shirt. It’s got to be too cold for that out here even though it’s May.
“Thanks.” I wrinkle my nose.
Teenagers literally stink, especially to vampires. Which is why most of them think the recent book and movie trend of vamps falling for teens is hilarious. Something about all the crazy hormones and rapid growth they’re going through gives them an unappealing aroma. But Scott’s off the charts odorous. I hope he’ll just let me go, so I don’t have to gag my way through a conversation.
“So, what were you doing— Woah.” Scott jerks his chin at the corner where an ambulance careens around the corner before shrieking to a halt in front of my house.
“Yeah, it’s my dad.” I shrug, trying to hide the fact that I'm wiping my hand on my pants after letting go of his. “Gotta go.”
“Hey, you need help?” Scott calls after me.
I want to get away from his stinky teenage miasma, but think maybe the stench would help me keep from slavering like a mad dog over all the blood in my parents’ house. Jumping rooftops makes me thirsty, and I don’t mean for wine. The vamp in charge will kill me if I go nuts and try to eat a house full of emergency personnel.
“Yeah, maybe. Come on!” I focus on not running at top vamp
speed. Even though I jog faster than I used to on a good day as a human, Scott keeps up. Teenagers. They're going to save the world, I tell you. If you don't believe me, go to the movies.
I go around the side and in through the kitchen door. Scott just stops next to the fridge and sniffs, rubbing his nose like he’s got allergies or a cold. But I don’t care. The paramedics have Dad on a stretcher. He’s unconscious. There’s a blue band of rubber wrapped around his right arm next to his shoulder, above the bullet wound. He looks way too pale. One of the EMTs drops an IV kit on his chest. He meets my eyes.
“Blood type,” says the EMT.
“AB positive.” I know these things now, wouldn’t have a month ago. I realize vampires could probably be pretty decent doctors if they kept themselves fed enough. Ourselves. I keep my mouth shut after that, feeling my fangs pricking against my lower lip. I even take a step backward toward stinky Scott. Thank God that smell coming off of him helps kill my appetite.
The EMT gives me a thumbs up, then barks Dad’s blood type into the speaker on his chest. Then, the EMT and his lady partner wheel Dad out of the house through the front door. Mom is weeping and wailing and following. The lady EMT nods at her, and Mom gets bustled into the back of the ambulance with Dad. I turn around.
“Why didn’t you tell me your Dad got shot?” Scott rubs one hand down his face, and I notice he looks like he’s barely got himself under control, just like me. I listen for his heart, and it’s thumping away. Good. He’s not a vamp too, then.
