“Ro, man, you look like you seen a fucking ghost, get with it man,” Jack snapped, bringing Roland back from another trance.
Roland then followed Jack into a room that looked as if it were an office. A huge mahogany desk stood in the middle of the room. Behind the desk were shelves lined with books, and off to the right was a safe. The picture that typically hung in front of the safe was on the floor and leaning against the wall. The door to the safe was left open. Inside were stacks of what looked to be money.
Jack bounded to the safe and when he looked inside, he couldn’t believe his eyes. There were stacks and stacks of hundreds and fifties that filled the back half of the safe. The front half contained a wooden box and when Jack opened it he exclaimed, “Fuck me, dude, we hit the motherfucking mother lode.” He looked back to Roland and paused.
Roland’s eyes were wide as if he had just met the Grim Reaper. Jack pushed him on the shoulder, “Dude, did you hear me? There must be thousands of dollars in cash and jewels, go find me something to dump this shit in.” But Roland didn’t move, couldn’t move, it was as if rigor mortis had settled in.
“Jesus-fucking-Christ, Ro, get a fucking grip.”
“He ain’t gonna help us,” Roland mumbled in a hypnotic tone. “We’re fucking dead men.”
“Ah, fuck you,” Jack snapped and then pushed past him. “I ought’a pop a cap in your ass and leave you here...”
All the while Jack was gone, Roland stood nearly frozen in the same spot he stood in when Jack was rummaging through the safe. He looked around the room and chill bumps chased chill bumps across his scalp and down his back and arms. He shivered with fear. He mumbled, “They’re playing with us...”
“I can’t believe this,” Jack ranted when he came back into the office.
“Grandma has more goddamned jewelry than the queen of fuckin’ England.” He opened a pillowcase for Roland to look into but Roland refused to move.
He kept looking around the room like a kid’s first visit to a toy store.
Jack pushed past him and went to the safe and grabbed the wooden box and dropped it in the pillowcase, then proceeded to dump the stacks of money.
Finished, Jack turned to Roland and asked, “What’s your problem?”
“I don’t know, man, I feel like someone is watching.” Jack strolled off, looking around the room. He didn’t see anything.
The place was empty. He then looked for hidden doors, pictures with holes, cameras, but he didn’t see anything other than a typical home office like the hundreds he had broken into. “Nada, dude. You must be getting a slight touch of paranoia since you eyed granny.”
“Let’s get the fuck out of here. This place is giving me the creeps.”
“Let’s check out the rest of the rooms, then we’re out of here,” Jack answered.
On the way out of the office, they dumped a few items that looked of value into the pillowcase.
When Jack turned to go to the back of the house, Roland grabbed his arm and said, “We have enough. I’m telling you, let’s go.” Jack hesitated for a beat. Then said, “All right. Let’s roll.” As they were walking down the steps, Jack said, “You gotta pop grandma. No witnesses, dude.”
Roland didn’t respond. As he walked down the steps, he kept his eyes down. He didn’t want to see anything appear that wasn’t really there.
At the bottom of the steps, Roland felt something pass by him. He spun around as if he’d been touched, and grabbed his pistol from the small of his back and slung it out, but there wasn’t anyone there to shoot at. He swung around again and pointed the pistol between Jack’s eyes.
“Whoa!” Jack shouted and ducked out of the way. “What the fuck, dude!”
“There, there, there was someone there. I felt him, her, it.” Jack eased Roland’s arm down. “Get a grip, Ro, and put the fuckin’
gun away before you get us killed...”
Roland put the gun in his pants at the small of his back, and turned in a circle a couple of times before being convinced they were alone. He just couldn’t shake the feeling that they were not alone in the hallway. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being stalked. Something was with them, breathing down his neck. He felt it. Like tiny insects crawling across his neck. It felt like his sister’s cat, always staring at him as if he wanted to eat him. He hated that damned thing. He hated this place. And he hated Jack for not listening.
“Come on, let’s wrap this up,” Jack whispered. He then started down the hall. Roland hesitated for a beat, waiting to see if he felt that hot misty breath on his neck again, then followed Jack to the kitchen.
When they arrived in the kitchen, Steliana was lying on the floor, looking at the door with a deadpan expression until Roland stepped in. She smiled up at him and he froze with an expression that said he had to have her.
“What the fuck, Ro, I thought you wanted out.”
After a couple beats, Roland responded, “I know man, but damn, I can’t seem to help myself. I gotta break me off a piece of that.”
“Then drag her ancient ass upstairs, do your thing, then pop her,” Jack said with a look of disgust. “I’ll go through down here and see if there’s anything else we can take...” He shook his head and continued, “We hit the mother lode and this asshole loses it...”
Just as Roland bent over to pick up Steliana, the basement door groaned out a long drawn out screech and both men stared at the door for a long beat before Roland whispered, “You go do your Ranger thang one more time, and this time you pop him in the head. I’ll take care of grandma.” Jack started for the door. “No witnesses, Ro.”
Roland bent down again to pick up Steliana and froze. He could have sworn her mouth and nose had been bleeding, but now it was as if she had never been hit. Furthermore, there wasn’t a drop of blood on her or her clothes. He turned to Jack but Jack was already going down the steps, and when he turned back to Steliana, she clamped her eyes shut, feigning unconsciousness.
“Okay, grandma, I know you’re awake.” She grinned. “All well and good, grandma. Up on your feet.”
Steliana reached out her hand and while Roland pulled her to her feet she said, “I’ll do anything you want, just please don’t hurt me.”
“I know you will, grandma, now hoof it up the steps.” She turned and started down the hall. “Just to let you know, I’ve never had kids.”
Jack stopped at the bottom of the steps, stunned. There was no old man lying at the bottom of the steps. “What the...” He stepped deeper into the basement and was taken aback. The room was empty of the old man and anything else that could have been shoved in a basement, but what made the room look peculiar was that it was totally black; floor, walls, ceiling, with just the single bulb in the center of the room. He took another step and realized that he didn’t have a shadow.
He turned in a circle. No shadow. No old man. Nothing but utter loneliness. But then again, out of the corner of his eye he thought he saw something, a bed, no, a... a... table, maybe, something, and he stepped in that direction. When he got to where he thought he saw something, nothing was there, but then at the far wall he saw the same piece of something.
Then he could smell it. The same smell when someone owned an animal and never bathed them. Like an old blanket that has never been washed.
He walked in the direction of the stench and found nothing but he knew something was here. He reached out and then jerked his hand back. He felt something he was sure, but...
He shook his head, mumbling, “What the... Like some fucking carnival funhouse...”
Then he felt something flutter by him and he spun around.
“Goddamn,” Jack grunted.
He waited.
Nothing.
“Fuck, man, I’m starting to act like that asshole upstairs.” Then he stuck his hand out but couldn’t see it, but on the other side of where his fingers should have been he thought he saw a face.
The face moved.
Startled, Jack jumped back, read
ying himself for some sort of an attack, but as before, nothing happened. Then the face moved again, and just as he started to follow the face, the door creaked and stopped with the metal clink of a deadbolt.
He pounded up the steps.
Jack banged on the door but it wasn’t budging. As best as he could, he kicked at it but the door merely groaned.
“Roland!” Jack shouted out. Nothing. He knew Roland was up on the second floor and couldn’t hear him but he shouted out again, banging on the door, trying with all his might to break through.
The light bulb winked out and darkness at once rushed up the steps.
Jack slammed back against the door, waiting for something, anything to attack him. Like Roland, he could feel it and was pissed he didn’t listen to him but the money was too good and these old fucks should have been easy.
After several breaths, Jack forced himself to relax. Hell, he had been through much more on his tours in Iraq and Afghanistan. “This is a fucking a cake walk,” Jack mumbled as he twisted the doorknob. The knob didn’t turn. The door was not opening.
He felt a puff of air as if thrown from the flapping wings of a bird and screamed out, “Holy fuck!” and threw his arms up to cover his face.
Then, in the instant of a blink of an eye, something took a bite out of his arm. He screamed out as he toppled down the steps as if thrown.
He lay on the cold black floor and felt something move across his back. The weight was unbearable. Paralyzes crept in when he felt the breath of something on his neck and the low guttural growl in his right ear.
He screamed out.
Roland pushed Steliana backwards toward the bed. “Please don’t hurt me,” Steliana moaned. “I promise, I’ll do anything you want, just don’t hurt me.” Steliana fell back onto the bed and quickly rolled to her stomach as if hiding her face would stop the crazed man standing over her. In an instant, the eighty-year-old ass turned into a thirty-year-old ass. The grannie panties turned into a T-Back thong. The wrinkles and dimples of age faded into the milky-white silkiness that had drawn him to her in the beginning. She purred.
“I just need to break off a little piece...” he whimpered. “I have got to have some.” He jerked her over on her back and stepped back. Again, she appeared thirty or more years younger. Her beauty trapped him in a hypnotic state and he couldn’t move.
She smiled up at him and slowly opened her legs, inviting him in.
“Wipe that fucking smile off your face, bitch—” he pulled his pistol,
“—or I’ll fucking shoot you here and now and take it anyway before you go cold,” Roland snapped in desperation. The trance pulled at him, even as his will to flee screamed in his head.
“I thought you wanted me,” Steliana seductively moaned. “I want you. I want to do you. I want to taste you.” She smiled, then purred while asking, “Don’t you want me?”
Breaking from his struggle, he screamed and raised the pistol and mere seconds before he could pull the trigger he felt something behind him.
He spun and fired but there was nothing there. Then he bounded back, startled, as if something had brushed by him. He jerked to his right and fired another shot that disappeared into an antique highboy. He felt it again and jerked left, and fired another shot that slammed into the wall.
Behind him, Steliana continued in her purr-like fashion, “Come on, baby, take me, take me. I want to feel you, do you, taste you...” Roland spun back around and Steliana was standing on the bed, naked, but now she was golden tan, the perfect vision of wont.
He screamed out and fired the remaining bullets into the ceiling as something bit the back of his neck and shoulder.
The basement door creaked and Jack bolted up the steps. He stumbled and fell a couple of times before he reached the door but then hit the door full force. The door was open, and he banged through, slamming into the adjacent wall, and nearly stumbled back down the steps. He dropped to his knees, stunned from the impact.
He looked at his arm and screamed when he saw the big chunk missing. The pain flared and burned, jerking tears to his eyes. Blood ran the length of his arm and dripped from his fingertips. He reached back to his neck and winced from the pain, and when he looked at his hand it was drenched in blood. He mumbled, “What the fuck...”
He crawled up the wall and stood looking at the basement door, waiting for a large animal or something to come bounding through and finish him off.
Then the breath from fluttering wings swept his face and when he turned toward it, something bit a large chunk out of his cheek. He cried and, flailing his arms, he ran down the hallway for the front door.
Upstairs, he heard Roland scream out but he ran as hard as he could to the front door and within a foot or so from the door he flipped over backwards as if clotheslined and slammed down on his shoulder with a menacing crunch of broken bones.
He screamed out Roland’s name all the while Roland was screaming out his name. He then heard Steliana call out, “Come on, baby, take me, take me. I want to feel you, do you, taste you...”
He slowly rolled onto his stomach and pulled his knees beneath him, and when he looked up Nicolae was looking down at him. Like Steliana, Nicolae looked to be thirty years old.
Nicolae looked down at Jack with a menacing grin that sent new chills through Jack’s body.
“Ro killed you, man. I saw it. I saw you take two to the chest.” Nicolae reached down, grasped Jack’s arm and pulled him to his knees. “No. He shot a helpless old man—” he chuckled, “—mere bullets can’t stop us...”
“What the! Who are you?” Jack shrieked. “What are you?”
“Did I hear your friend say you were a Ranger?” Jack didn’t answer.
“I hope not, because you can’t even take on an old man.” Nicolae lifted Jack off the floor and threw him against the wall. As Jack was sliding down, Nicolae took another nasty bite out of Jack’s neck and then bolted up the steps. Midway up, Nicolae disappeared in a puff of red mist.
Lying on the floor, Jack screamed out. The pain was excruciating. He could barely move but drained every bit of energy he had and crawled toward the door, and when his hand plopped down in Nicolae’s blood, Jack screamed out and jerked his hand up as if he had put his hand in acid. He looks at his hand and there was smoke steaming from the burn. The pain and tears blurred his vision and he dropped down face down. “Roland!” Then he saw the pillowcase, its booty calling out to him, and crawled across the floor, all the while thinking of his crack pipe. I can do this, he thought, I can do this...
Roland was lying on the floor, crying. His body was covered with bites as if Steliana tried to dine on him but couldn’t finish. When Roland looked up, he saw Nicolai and Steliana looking down at him, smiling.
“Trick or treat”, Steliana quipped and Roland pushed back, pulling the trigger of his empty pistol. For a brief moment he saw something he had never seen in his life. A creature that looked half-human, half-feline. The head was bald with small pointy ears. The eyes, red and lash-less, and with no eyebrows. The mouth had long thick fangs that dipped of drool and blood beneath a small cat-like snout. He cried out to God, but God didn’t answer.
“He must not like your costume, darling,” Nicolae joked.
Still trying to scoot across the floor, Roland shouted out, “What the fuck are you, vampires?”
“Don’t be a silly boy. There is no such thing as vampires,” Steliana answered as she slowly moved toward him. Blood dripped from beneath her chin. She licked her lips as an animal would do after a feast. She purred as she took another step closer. “Mmmm. You taste absolutely delicious.”
“Damn Bram. He has caused our people trouble throughout the world with his silly stories of vampires,” Nicolae joked. He then turned into the beast for one brief moment only to watch the fear take over the helpless man. “A vampire doesn’t toy with its prey.”
“We’re Strigoi’s,” Steliana continued. “We never settle for just blood.”
“Nothing is ever w
asted in this house,” Nicolae said as he crept closer and closer.
Roland pulled the trigger of his empty pistol as if willing the thing full.
Stranded in the corner, Roland wet himself, and Steliana laughed.
“Bad, boy, look at the mess you just made.”
“Fuck you,” Roland replied in deep fear and anger.
“Oh, you wanted to, yes you did. You wanted it so badly you’d forgotten why you came here.”
“Humans are like that,” Nicolae said with a growl. “Short attention spans. Short term goals.” He growled and stepped closer.
Roland clutched at his chest, murmuring, “Fuck you,” over and over as Nicolae crept even closer. The drool from Nicolae’s mouth sent a new shiver to Roland’s loins and he wet himself again.
Like their cousins, the cat, they toyed with their prey.
“Uh-oh,” Steliana looked to the door. “You should go downstairs and do that Ranger thing.” She looked back to Roland and explained, “Some folks say Strigoi’s are troubled souls of the dead rising from the grave.
However, some of us can be living people with, as you can see, certain magical properties. Some of the characteristics of the Strigoi include the ability to transform into an animal, invisibility, and the propensity to drain the vitality of victims by drinking their blood.”
“Or, as I like to say, the loss of limb,” Nicolae continued with his menacing grin. He turned to Steliana and said, “You’re looking beautiful, my dear.”
“Thank you, dear. Do you think we should explain that Bram got his idea of the vampire from your grandfather?” She turned back to Roland as she continued talking to Nicolae, “You have to try him, dear. Marinated in alcohol for years, he’s simply delicious.”
“I prefer the taste of aged crack cocaine myself.” Nicolae looked at the door, then back to Steliana. “Don’t kill him until I get back.”
“We’re doing Roland first,” Steliana asked but never taking her eyes off Roland.
Past The Patch Page 14
