Alex Rains, Vampire Hunter (Book 2): Hell Night

by Kincade, Matt

  “And where is it now?”

  “I don't know,” Josh stammered. “He . . . I mean, I sort of cut off his hand, the hand with the ring. I don't know where it went after that.”

  “I saw,” said Billings. “A zombie ate it, along with Dan's fingers.”

  “Ew,” said Emily.

  “Hmm.” Annie nodded. “So, it was Dan Sinder.” She hobbled down the stairs, the rifle resting in the crook of her arms. “Knew it was one of you.”

  “I'm glad you cut off his hand,” said Emily. “Maybe that makes me a bad person, but he deserved it. I wish you'd cut off his head.”

  Josh grinned sheepishly. “I was going to try that next.”

  “So, wait a minute,” said Alex. “Annie, what do you know about this ring? I feel like you know a lot more about all this than you're lettin' on.”

  “Let's just say I know about that ring. And I've been lookin' for it for a long, long time. And the rest of the story is gonna wait until we get out of these tunnels.”

  “How far do the tunnels go?” asked Billings. “I mean, everybody's heard the stories, but this is larger than anything I'd ever imagined.” He peered down a side tunnel that disappeared into the darkness.

  “Hell, you don't know the half of it. Belden dug miles of tunnels down here. Easy enough to do, if you've got an undead labor force. Sometimes he'd give 'em an order and then forget about 'em, and they'd just keep going . . . might be goin' still, for all I know. And then these tunnels connect with a lot of the old mine shafts, which are pretty much everywhere around here. You could wander around in the dark here for a long, long time if you didn't know where you were goin'. But we don't wanna stay too long. Some of old Belden's creations are still running around loose down here.”

  “Creations?” asked Josh.

  “Christ’s sake, just shut your traps and walk. I'll say my piece in my own good time.”

  They trudged on in silence. The tunnel led to a descending stone staircase, then to another brick tunnel. Along this tunnel were dozens of small rooms. Each one had a door of thick steel bars.

  “What were these for?” Emily asked as she peered into an empty cell.

  Annie shook her head. “You don't want to know.”

  At the end of the hall, another doorway opened onto a spacious room with a vaulted brick ceiling. Shelves lined the place, some filled with books, some holding strange, macabre souvenirs—skulls, bones, inexplicable creatures in jars of formaldehyde, stacks of notes on handwritten paper, dried herbs in jars. Most of it was covered in dust and cobwebs. On the desk, mixed in with the ancient was some of the new—a battery powered lantern; a laptop; a graphing calculator; a table filled with modern laboratory glassware, beakers, pipettes, and Erlenmeyers; scaffolding supporting a crazy network of glass tubing and retorts; a ceramic coffee cup; a whiteboard covered in scribbles; a modern office chair with a sweater thrown over it.

  “Belden Ashford's laboratory,” said Annie. “I haven't been down here in years. I guess Dan actually found the place.”

  “Are these . . .” Emily leaned toward the bookshelf, reading the titles. “These are the books that went missing from the library, and more besides.” She walked slowly past the dusty old bookshelves, reading titles lettered in gold leaf on black leather spines. “Lots more.” One of the shelves held a few rolled scrolls. Emily picked one up, and it began to crumble in her fingers. “This is papyrus,” she said. “It's in Egyptian hieroglyphics.”

  Rachael leaned in close, staring at a shapeless mass of claws and eyeballs floating in a jar of greenish fluid. “God,” she whispered.

  “This is fascinating and all,” said Annie, “but we shouldn't linger. I know you did a number on him, but I don't think we've heard the last of Dan Sinder. Who knows what he's got up his sleeves?”

  “Sleeve,” Josh corrected. Emily hid her grin behind her hand.

  “But first,” said Annie, “I've gotta do something I should have done a long time ago.” She set the lantern down and pulled the old bookshelf down. It crashed half on and half off the desk, smashing the labware, spilling the ancient books into a heap. She knelt down with a Zippo lighter and lit the pile.

  “The things in these books weren't never meant for this world,” she said as she picked up a jar holding a three-eyed monkey's head in formaldehyde. “Belden spent half his life gathering all of this from the far corners of the earth, reassembling knowledge that was better off lost. This is his legacy, and I mean to wipe it out. Once the ring is gone, that'll be the end of him and his works.”

  She threw the jar and it shattered. The formaldehyde burst into flames, throwing liquid fire across the scattered pile of books.

  Flames climbed the bookshelf, spread across the desk, snapped and writhed against the arched brick ceiling. Smoke choked the room. Annie turned her back on the growing blaze. “Y'all comin', or not?”

  As they left the burning laboratory, they passed another side door. A noise from within drew their attention. Annie turned and held up the lantern.

  The room was brick-lined, like the last. The floor was stone. Ancient tools hung on the wall—rusted saws and knives and shears, surgical instruments from a more primitive, brutal age. On a wheeled cart, there were more modern tools—a cordless electric saw, chisels, scalpels. In the middle of the room stood a Victorian-era autopsy table, upon which lay a pile of body parts. A severed head sat at the head of the table. It growled and snapped at them, eyes clouded white, skin falling off in chunks. The smell of rancid meat hung thick and heavy in the air.

  “Oh, God,” said Billings, gagging at the smell. “It's Janice. It's Janice Bueller.”

  “Dan's trial run,” said Alex. “Poor woman.” He drew his sword and rammed the blade through her eye.

  Chapter Nineteen

  The brick tunnel opened onto yet another tunnel, carved from the native sandstone and shored up with ancient, rotting timbers.

  From far away came the sound of a little girl crying. “Ignore it,” said Annie. “It's another one of Belden's toys. Some foul thing he brought here through doors that never shoulda been opened. You'd follow that sound like you'd follow the end of a rainbow. Always just a little bit ahead, until you're so deep in the earth and so lost that you'd never get out. And that's when they come for you.”

  Something shuffled in the darkness. Annie set the lantern down and freed her rifle. She peered down the tunnel.

  A pair of eyes appeared, far off in the dark. Then another, and another. Bright points in the blackness, reflecting the light of the lantern. Four, then eight, then ten. Noises echoed down the brick tunnel—whispers, giggles, heavy breathing, the click of teeth, and the scratch of claws on stone.

  “What is that?” whispered Alex, his hand on his sword.

  “Shh,” said Annie. She pulled back the hammer on the rifle.

  They came closer, and more details came to light—jaws and fangs, claws and scales and bat wings, jumbled-up horrors beyond imagination, demented combinations of man and animal. Light glinted from goat eyes. Saliva dripped from alligator jaws.

  “My God, what are they?” said Emily.

  Annie responded, “Belden loved to experiment, to try new combinations.” She raised the rifle to her shoulder. “This might get ugly,” she said.

  And then, just as suddenly, they vanished.

  In an instant, the creatures disappeared, scuttling back into the dark, flitting and crawling into side tunnels and cracks in the stone.

  Something larger appeared. Its eyes were the size of golf balls, glowing in the lantern-light. The thing moaned low and grunted, lumbering closer. The light from the lantern found it, a giant hairy beast that filled the tunnel.

  “Jesus!” Rachael took a step back. She raised her pistol.

  “Wait, wait,” said Annie. She held up her hand. “This one's okay.”

  The thing lumbered closer. A huge, shaggy creature appeared, walking on four paws that gouged the dirt floor with giant curved claws. It had the body of a bear, b
ut the huge head and dark eyes of an elk, and antlers that scraped along the roof of the tunnel.

  “No way,” Josh breathed. “No fuckin' way.”

  “Are you even shitting me right now?” said Rachael. “It's the Bearalope. It's the goddamned Bearalope.”

  “He hates that name,” said Annie. She lowered her rifle and stepped forward. The beast crooned softly and lowered its head. Annie rubbed the fur of its long snout. “He likes to be called Clarence.”

  “I . . .” Alex started. “I don't even know. What the actual fuck?”

  “Clarence is another one of Belden's victims. See, there's really not that much difference between a reanimated man and a reanimated animal. The heart of what a zombie is, is . . . well, we ain't exactly got words for it. There's your flesh, your blood and bone, the physical parts of you, and then . . . well, then there's the rest of you, the part that goes missing when you die. You could call it a soul, if you like. What Belden's magic . . . his science . . . whatever you want to call it, what it does is take that other part from somewhere else and cram it into a body where it ain't never supposed to be. There's lots of places you can get that other part from. There are plenty of places not so different than this plane. Clarence here, he's as intelligent and reasonable as any human being. Can't talk, on account of he's got an elk's head, but he knows what we're saying. The undead, though, and those things we saw just now, their spark comes from a different place. A lower place. The things you'll find there, all they know is hate and hunger. They were never meant for this plane. Bringing them here, it's a crime against reality itself.”

  Alex adjusted his hat brim. “So, what, you're sayin' they're from Hell?”

  Annie shrugged. “Not exactly. But I guess it's as good an explanation as any. And I don't have all the answers. Nobody does. Nobody living, anyway.”

  “There are other worlds than these?” said Josh. Everybody ignored him.

  Tom laughed once, short and sharp. Then again. The giggles erupted out of him like water from a spring, bubbling and flowing until he was laughing hysterically. He leaned against the wall of the tunnel and slid down until he sat on the ground, still laughing.

  “You okay, Tom?” said Emily, cautiously.

  “No,” he said. He laughed again. “I'm not okay. I'm an idiot. I'm the world's biggest idiot. All my life, I've been chasing down conspiracy theories, searching for the truth, scanning the skies for UFOs, on the lookout for skinwalkers and chupacabra and Lizard People, and the whole time, the whole damned time, there was a magical bear-elk hybrid wandering around in the mine tunnels under my feet. Not to mention the fucking vampires and the zombies. The truth is out there, and I was completely blind to it.”

  “Hey, it's not that bad,” said Rachael. “Maybe there are still space aliens out there.”

  “It's all bullshit.” He stared down at the ground. “Everything on my podcast. My whole life. The Greys. The Illuminati. The Lizard People. It's all bullshit. An entire lifetime of searching, and I never found one single damned bit of hard evidence. I believed it because I wanted to believe it. It felt good to be in the know. To be privy to secrets that normal people weren't. I don't know. After a while, you've got so much of yourself tied up in it that you can't ever admit you were wrong.”

  He held up his mutilated hand. “Just leave me,” he said. “I got bit. We all know what's going to happen now. I'll only slow you down, and then sooner or later one of you is going to have to put a bullet between my eyes. I'd rather just stay here.” He held up his pistol. “Just leave me one bullet. I'll take care of it myself, when the time comes.”

  Annie shook her head. “You ain't getting out of it that easy. We need every bit of help we can get, and you've got hours and hours left before you drop dead. And anyway, if we get that ring destroyed, you'll be in the clear. No more zombies.”

  Tom said, “Oh, yeah.” He paused for a moment. “Shit. Way to ruin my dramatic exit.”

  Clarence the Bearalope lumbered up to Tom. The creature craned its neck forward, sniffed at Tom, and licked him in the face.

  “Ah, goddammit,” said Tom, wiping the slobber from his face. “Can't even let a guy die in peace.” Still sitting against the tunnel wall, he said, “Emily, I'm sorry. I never meant . . . I shouldn't have even suggested giving you up to him. I was a coward. I was just thinking about myself.”

  “It's okay,” Emily smiled and held out her hand. After a moment's pause, Tom grabbed hold with his good hand, and she pulled him to his feet. “We're all scared. Let's get out of here.”

  With another snort, the bearalope turned and disappeared down the tunnel, absent-mindedly scraping its antlers against the brick walls. The noise trailed off into the darkness long after the beast was gone.

  ***

  Once more, they walked single file down the old tunnel, Annie in front, holding the lantern. Soon, Annie stopped at yet another intersection. A tunnel led away at a right angle, sloping gradually upwards. It broke through into another brick tunnel.

  “These here are the whores’ tunnels,” said Annie. “Course, they didn't always connect with Belden's network.”

  Alex said, “The what, now?”

  Annie turned her head. “What are you, deaf? The whores’ tunnels. Back in the olden days they had these tunnels made so folks could get from the opera house or the city hall or wherever, and then into the brothel without anybody seeing. This was a very cosmopolitan kind of place. We're walking right under Old Main Street now. In fact . . .” Annie approached a huge steel door, locked shut with a shiny, modern padlock. She reached into her pocket and produced a ring of keys. “We're here.” She opened the door.

  Daylight filtered dimly through floorboards above. Rows of stacked chairs stood against the wall next to a long-dead soda machine and a brochure rack.

  “Where the heck are we?” asked Billings.

  “This is the basement of the old McCormick Hotel,” said Annie. “It's safe enough for now, at least until we get our bearings. Right above our heads is where Dan Sinder made a blood sacrifice of Buddy Johnson and started this whole mess.” She pointed toward the corner, where three cases of bottled water sat. “Hope y'all don't mind, but I looted the town a bit. Tom, I borrowed some things from your store.”

  Tom smiled. “I think I can let it slide, Annie.”

  “This was the state park information center, so there's also a first aid kit here. We can do a little bit better for that hand of yours.” She gestured towards a table, upon which sat stacked boxes of ammunition. “I dropped by the sheriff's office, too.”

  Alex picked up a box of bullets. “Well, bless your little heart.”

  “So, drink up, reload, have a sit, but we can't dawdle too long. There's something you all need to see. Things are still in motion, and they ain't good things.”

  Alex pulled a folding chair out of the stack and set it up, then selected a bottle of water and cracked the seal. He settled into the chair and took a long drink. “Not that we ain't grateful for what you done back there, but I think it's about time you come clean with us. You know more about all this than you're lettin' on.”

  Annie shrugged. “Mayhap I do.”

  “Mayhap you do.”

  Annie sighed and sat down on another chair. “Alright. You want answers, I'll give you answers. But you're gonna say I'm loony.”

  Tom said, “People have been calling me loony for years. You get used to it.”

  “I think,” Billings added, “we're all finding out that the world is just a little more crazy than we gave it credit for.”

  “Mayhap. And you . . .” For the first time, Annie seemed to struggle for words. “You might judge me. You might think less of me.”

  Billings said, “Don't tell me you've got a hand in all of this mess?”

  Annie shook her head. “It ain't like that,” she said. “Not directly, anyhow.” She sighed again. “See, there's a reason why I know so much about Belden Ashford and his hobbies, about the way things went down back then. It'
s because . . . because Belden Ashford is my father.”

  The room was silent. Finally, Billings said, “Don't you mean grandfather? Great-grandfather even? Belden Ashford died a hundred and fifty years ago.”

  Alex smiled. “Alright, maybe you was right. Maybe I do think y'all are a little loony. But keep talking.”

  Annie sighed. She pulled a silver flask from her pocket, unscrewed the cap, and took a long drink. “Of course, I don't mean father in the normal sense of the word. He . . . made me. I'm of his blood, but I weren't born of no woman.”

  Slowly, she took off her wig. She held the braided silver tresses in her hand, revealing close-cropped, white hair. Her ears were long and thin, tapered to points on the top. Elf ears. “I'm about a hundred and sixty years old, near as I can figure. I don't age like normal folk.”

  Emily leaned forward, staring at Annie's elfin ears. Annie blushed and looked away with a pained but stoic expression. “Y'all just go ahead and stare,” she said. “I know I look like some kind of circus freak.”

  “No,” said Rachael. “Not at all.” She touched the old woman on the shoulder. “You're still Annie. Nothing's changed.”

  Annie nodded, at a loss for words. Finally, she said, “You kids remember how you told me about that boy who made a homunculus? Well, that's more or less how Belden made me. 'Cept my mother was a milch cow in Ashford's barn. Most folks don't remember gettin' born. I gotta say, I envy them. It was a hell of a thing. First I wasn't, and then . . . well, then I was. I don't remember where I was before, but it was warm and happy, and there was sunshine, and I didn't have no worries about nothin'. And then, just like that, I was cold and blood-slicked, bein' pulled out of the belly of a fresh-killed cow by lantern light, with old Belden Ashford standin' over me, him wearing a butcher's apron, all splattered with blood.”

  Emily made a face. “But . . . but why?”

  “Oh, you innocent child,” Annie said, with unexpected bitterness. “Why? Honey, I was born into this world with the body of a twelve-year-old girl and the mind of an infant. What the hell do you think Belden Ashford made me for?”