Blood Hunter: An Urban Fantasy Vampire Hunting Novel

by Nicholas Woode-Smith

  The vampires had taken everything from me. Left me without choice. Without even the path to manhood.

  “I do.”

  The man handed me one of the spears, before turning towards the darkness outside. He stopped, and inclined his head, bidding me to follow.

  I gave Sifiso one final look, before following the man into the darkness.

  The path of the Umzingeli wegazi.

  Blood Hunter.

  Part 2

  Chapter 9. Roamer

  Sand erupted into a dust storm, leaving a fog in my wake as I sped along yet another dirt road, towards yet another backwater village, and yet another alleged monster sighting. The motor on my dirt bike chugged diligently, but I couldn’t help but imagine that it sounded like someone with a nasty cough.

  I hoped it wasn’t breaking down. My old faithful had been much more efficient. But that garkain down by New Ulundi hadn’t taken kindly to my less than romantic advances. I’d survived but couldn’t say the same about my old bike.

  This new one wasn’t bad. But, you never truly appreciated something when it had been forced onto you.

  Perhaps, that’s why, despite taking me in and training me, I was never truly thankful to Silumko, my teacher. It didn’t help that he didn’t ever ask for thanks. Walking the path was enough for him.

  In fact, it was all that mattered to him.

  Eight years had passed since that fateful night, and I had served as a fully-fledged Blood Hunter for four of those years.

  During my apprenticeship and after that, I had travelled the lands. I’d seen village after village, seldom travelling into the towns that were flooded with impi. I travelled to defend the common folk from the monsters. The impi could not be everywhere. And, seldom did they care about the lives of backwater villagers.

  But this was not my goal.

  I sighed as the engine on my bike started to peter out. Hadn’t I filled it up this morning? Wait, no. That had been last week. Was it before or after the zombie dressed as Count Dracula?

  I pulled over, walking my bike the extra distance to hide it behind a tree off the road. If my internal compass wasn’t too off, I was near to the village. It didn’t have a name. Not officially, at least. It had been a hamlet once, but people escaping the border wars had flocked to it.

  That meant a lot of people, in an isolated and semi-lawless settlement. That meant chaos, curses, conflict. And, with all that culminating in one thing: monsters.

  News from the petrol station off the highway said that this village had monster trouble. No details beyond that. But that was usually the case. Small town folk had a terrible understanding of monsters. It was always an evil spirit, or a demon to them. Sometimes an old and vengeful god. I’d killed a few of those. They were quite disappointing for deities.

  But, that’s why I had to investigate. I was a Blood Hunter. That meant I sought out vampires of the Blood, and then put them down. But, because people seldom knew what they were dealing with, it was very possible that a demon ended up being a vampire.

  But, besides that, my teacher advised we hunt all sorts of monsters. It honed our skills. Plus, we were meant to charge for our services. And then use that money to fund the war against the Izingane Zegazi.

  I opened my meagre wallet. Just a single ten idola note. King Shaka’s face stared mockingly at me. I sighed again.

  The fundraising hadn’t been going so well. These were poor lands. What I made was barely enough to keep myself alive, much less fund the war against vampires. Qamata! I couldn’t even afford ammunition. Bullets were expensive. Silver bullets, even more so. My Star M43 pistol was painfully empty in its holster on the side of my tactical vest.

  I hoped that this nameless village had some money to spare for me ridding them of their monster. And hopefully, it was a monster!

  Just a few months ago, I’d been called into a village to rid it of a vampire. Sounded promising. Until I found a poor albino boy tied up in the elder’s attic. The villagers didn’t feel like paying me any compensation after I spent an hour lecturing them about the difference between albinos and vampires. And rifts! They shouldn’t be making the connection at all. Every member of the Izingane Zegazi I’d seen were as dark as me and everyone else.

  Vampires mutated differently; I had discovered in my almost decade-long journey now as a Blood Hunter. Most had red eyes, like the creatures that had burnt Mqanduli to the ground, but other mutations were diverse. Some had claws, some grew thick natural armour. Some even grew wings.

  This was another reason why I pursued any lead I could get. Almost anything could possibly be a vampire. A dog that got bitten by a vampiric squirrel from another world, the demon that lulled priests into a false sense of security while sucking their blood, or even the massive heaving pile of flesh that drained everything in its path dry.

  So, I trudged in the midday sun, down a dirt road, to a nameless village, carrying a backpack hidden under my tattered old initiation blanket, and a small jerry can to hopefully get petrol. That last thing was a vain hope. I had no money. But, hopefully, if there was a monster, I could earn my petrol. And, hopefully, some bullets!

  I contemplated the silence as I walked. I enjoyed the humming of a bike’s engine, but I had spent so long in silence during the last years that it had become comforting. There was hardly anyone to ever talk to, and that suited me fine. I didn’t have much I wanted to say.

  I eventually arrived at the nameless village. It had no sign. No particularly unique landmarks. It was far away from any main roads. I preferred it that way. I wasn’t a wanted man, but impi asked inconvenient questions. And an armed man who wasn’t serving in the Emperor’s army was always seen as a problem. Some impi tolerated the Blood Hunters, but most wanted to know where I’d gotten my pistol and my assegai.

  That wasn’t a conversation I wanted to have. With them, or my own people, if they figured out what I was.

  I entered the village. It was larger than I predicted. The buildings, a motley combination of houses, shacks and huts, snaked in between the hills, with some homesteads dominating the hilltops.

  I walked past a herd boy, nudging some thick-horned cattle towards their kraal. He eyed me suspiciously. He looked about thirteen, fourteen. The tattered blanket on my back caught his eye. I approached him, but as he caught sight of the black metal piece I had displayed on my black tactical vest, he averted his gaze and rushed back to his work.

  I really needed some clothes that didn’t stand out so much. All black, tactical gear, with a relic of who I was before taking the path, was not the way to remain inconspicuous. But it was practical. You never knew when a monster was stalking you in the bush, or a bandit wanted to shiv you between the ribs. My vest was padded against such attacks. It would stop a zombie or ghoul bite, and maybe even let me survive some shrapnel. I had gotten used to its weight a long time ago.

  Besides the lowing of the cattle being confined for the evening, the village was quiet. I saw a few people walking between buildings. All of them eyed me suspiciously.

  Yeah, definitely needed to think about some more appropriate clothing.

  None of the people I saw were armed with anything more than a sjambok, a wooden whipping stick. That was disappointing. Some of these backwater villages had a semblance of a black market in firearms. Post-Cataclysm Southern Africa was full of guns, no matter the attempts by the Empire to control the supply. But, it seemed I’d have to find another place to restock my poor pistol.

  I proceeded further into the village. It was surprising that this place didn’t have a name. There was a grocery store with really outdated tabloids about Hope City monster hunters, a stall selling pirated pre-Cataclysm movies on DVD and VCR, and a shebeen.

  Before I could consider searching the pirated film stall for anything to watch on my non-existent DVD player, a man with greying black hair approached me. In a hushed tone, he asked in Zulu.

  “Are you from the garrison, impi? We sent word a month ago for help. Where’s the
rest of the company?”

  Some other villagers began to congregate around us, keeping a respectful distance.

  I shook my head.

  “I am not an impi,” I replied, in Xhosa. This was a Xhosa man. But, it was becoming less and less prudent to speak the non-imperial tongue around the impi.

  The man squinted, suspicious, and voicelessly asking: “Then what are you?”

  “I’m a Blood Hunter,” I continued.

  He seemed to visibly recoil. Without saying goodbye, he and the crowd began making themselves scarce. Soon enough, I was alone in what I suspected was the village square.

  I sighed, for what seemed the umpteenth time today. I was used to this. Got it a lot. Blood Hunters were not strictly legal. We carried firearms, despite not being impi. And we took it upon ourselves to hunt monsters, when the impi were meant to be the sole law enforcement of the land. Well, excluding the Izingane Zegazi and their thralls.

  It wasn’t completely public that our true purpose was to hunt the vampire clans. The impi tended to tolerate us. But, if it came out that we were working against the liege lords of the land, then perhaps it would be a different story.

  None of the villagers had remained. Sometimes, one or two did, to offer me reward in secret. Like witch doctors, Blood Hunters were scorned by the people. Yet, they rushed to us when they became desperate.

  This was our lot. My lot.

  And I’d grit my teeth, if it meant following the path.

  I moved to the shebeen. It was true of all towns, villages and settlements that the best place to find a lead was the place where everyone got drunk. And, without the health standards and restrictions of a licensed pub, shebeens were very good at loosening people’s tongues.

  But, upon entering this shebeen, I was greeted by a depressingly empty bar, with only a single patron lying with his head on the front counter, while a bartender idly opened and closed the cash register.

  The bartender saw me and stood to attention, fast. I could see the battle going on behind his eyes. He wasn’t keen on serving an armed stranger, but he was also desperate for cash.

  Desperation. It stank like blood and sweat. But it was also the Blood Hunters nectar. We thrived on it. We were bathed in it. It was desperation that drove us onward.

  I sat down at the bar, as the bartender decided to temper his enthusiasm while being polite to a customer, but sceptical of a stranger.

  Before he could list all the beverages that were out of my price range, I pre-empted him.

  “Water, please. Tap.”

  The bartender looked disappointed.

  “The pump station is old.”

  “That’s fine.” I drank water out of puddles in the mud. I could survive some badly treated water. Would take a lot more than cholera to kill me! And yes, those do sound like famous last words.

  The bartender shrugged. “Your funeral.”

  I didn’t speak as he disappeared to go and fetch my water. There were no taps behind the counter. I suspected he was fetching water from the bathroom. Didn’t bother me.

  The shebeen was cosy. Cleaner than many I had frequented before. That may be due to the lack of people. Signs bearing the branding of local and foreign beers adorned the walls, interspersed with photos of happy patrons. It was the type of bar that had a community feel. If only there was a community present to feel it.

  The bartender returned with my glass. The water looked clean. For the most part. I took a sip. It tasted only a little bit metallic.

  “This is a shebeen, stranger,” the patron to my side finally said, slurring slightly. But it seemed his slurring was more due to tiredness than inebriation. “Why are you drinking water? Get something that’ll put some hairs on that chin.”

  Odd. He had no facial hair to speak of. Middle aged, slightly wrinkled. But no facial hair.

  “I’m on the job,” I replied, taking another sip.

  The patron snorted. “All the more reason to drink!”

  I didn’t argue as I took another sip, and then inclined my head towards the glass-front fridge behind the bar.

  “Perhaps, but what would I order? You seem to be out of beer.”

  The bartender twitched. Was that a nerve? Or something else.

  “There’s no beer,” he confirmed. “But there’s spirits, if you’re up to it. I still have some Coronation. It’s aged well.”

  Coronation? I doubted it was real. The Coronation Whiskey was distilled in honour of the Emperors. Only the top Zulu clans had access to a bottle.

  I glanced around the almost empty shebeen, confirming the lack of customers.

  “Tell me, barkeep,” I said, leaning forward. “How does a village this small, but obviously well-stocked, consume so much alcohol so quickly?”

  The bartender twitched again. Yep, I was right. Sore point. He excused himself and disappeared into the back. He left the register open. I noted that it was empty except for a few old rand coins and a single Idola note bearing an image of King Dingane.

  The patron sidled closer to me. He didn’t seem drunk at all, despite his insistence that I should drink.

  “It isn’t wise to bring attention to dark forces,” he said, hushed. “Best to ignore them and let them go away.”

  “Getting the attention of dark forces is my business.”

  The patron squinted, and then examined me fully. His eyes fell on my pistol and my sheathed assegai. If he looked under the blanket, he would notice more. A machete, hatchet and equipment to make traps.

  “Are you an impi?” he whispered, sounding half hesitant and half in awe.

  It would be awe-inspiring if an impi travelled this far to help a Xhosa village, yeah.

  “No,” I replied. “I actually do my job.”

  He nodded, and I saw the hint of an amused smile. Good for me. Some Xhosa respected impi. I tended not to get along with them.

  “Why have you come to our inappropriately unnamed village, not-impi?” he asked more loudly, indicating for the bartender to bring him some of the hard tack. The bartender was happy to oblige, as he opened a safe and revealed a bottle of Coronation whiskey. I wasn’t an expert at forgeries, but the black and white and taped on printed label was kind of a giveaway. It did smell like whiskey, though. If I had some money, and wasn’t on the job, I’d have considered buying a glass myself.

  “I heard about a monster,” I said, simply.

  The bartender hurried his pouring and then retreated. See no evil, hear no evil. Didn’t help them escape it, though. A ghoul you couldn’t hear or see was a ghoul that would promptly enjoy chewing on your bones.

  The patron leaned in again. “There’s a house. On the outskirts of the village. One of the old houses. Some white homestead back in the day. A lady used to live there months back. Good Xhosa lady. Always showed up to church, always praised the ancestors. But, one day, she disappeared. It was then that the troubles started…”

  The man paused to swig. I waited, patiently. I used to tap my foot irritably, waiting for the theatrics to end. But clients loved telling stories, with suitably dramatic pauses.

  He gave a satisfied sigh and continued.

  “Started with the usual hubbub. Noises in the dead of night. Sickening laughter, screams, yelling. But with no one there to make the sound. Lights would go on and off in the abandoned house. No one had seen the owner for ages. Hadn’t come to church or any of the market days. In the coming months, it got worse. A reeking stench moving like a cloud down the hill from the house…”

  “What type of stench?” I asked, interjecting.

  “Reeking, as I said.”

  “I mean…corpses, rot, fire? A lot of creatures have distinctive smells. It might help me guess what it is.”

  He shook his head. “The smell is indescribable.”

  Typical.

  “The worst was yet to come,” he continued, leaning closer, as if engaging in a conspiracy. “Shipments of liquor began to disappear at night. First a few bottles, then crates, and now entire fri
dges. Poor Thabo over there can’t keep stock long enough to sell it. We set up a posse to investigate the disappearance but found no one….no one human at least…was responsible.”

  Or, more likely, everyone in the posse was dividing the loot.

  “Did this posse investigate the house?”

  He looked at me like I was mad.

  “Of course not! Do you think we have a death wish?”

  Apparently, I did.

  I suppressed a sigh.

  “So, a reeking stench, disappearing liquor, odd noises. Taking a house as its haunt. Probably consumed the old owner…”

  The patron’s eyes widened. He had apparently not thought about that possibility.

  “Do you know anyone else I can talk to about what this thing might be?”

  He shook his head. “No need. I know exactly what it is.”

  It was my turn to lean in closer, as his voice dropped to below a whisper.

  “Tokoloshe.”

  I laughed, in his face, unable to stop myself from leaning back. He looked at me flabbergasted, his eyes offended. I tried to contain myself, let out a few more guffaws, and then gripped the side of the bar.

  “I’m…I’m sorry,” I managed to choke out, rubbing a tear away. “It might be a tokoloshe…”

  “Ssshhh, not so loud. You’ll get its attention.”

  “Tokoloshe are trickster sprites, possibly demons. But they’re functionally harmless.”

  “Tell that to the nice lady on the hill.”

  My expression darkened, and he leaned back at the sudden change.

  “I know. And I’ll slay whatever killed her. It is probably a nightkin. They look like tokoloshe and are vampiric.”

  He waved dismissively. “Nightkin? Bah! Those monkeys are just vermin.”

  I’d seen villages depopulated by said vermin. Nightkin weren’t a joke. If this was one, I just had to hope it was by itself. Then I could handle it.

  “If that’s everything, I’ll be investigating the house…” I moved to reach for my wallet. The man stopped me, placing his hand on my arm, before flicking a coin over onto the counter.