by Roger Keller
Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Chapter1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Low-Skilled Job
Roger Keller
Copyright © 2015 Roger Keller
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 1546756469
ISBN-13: 978-1546756460
Chapter1
I took another drink and watched Danny dance with the vampire. He saw me and held up a beer bottle as some kind of salute. The vampire danced with her back to Danny as he leered over her shoulder. She wore a black leather motorcycle jacket that was covered in patches and buttons. Bone white skin showed through the holes in her jeans. She must have been beautiful, back when she was human. The vampire fixed her eyes on me, then cocked her head like a curious wolf. She smiled, while Danny groped her.
I turned back to the table that served as a bar and helped myself to some more free booze. The good beer was hidden in a cooler under the table. I bent down to fish a bottle of Grolsch out of the ice water. Everything felt wrong. I looked back as my fingers closed around the Grolsch bottle’s flip top. A black army boot tapped the tile floor behind me. I stood up, hoping I wouldn’t have to use the last bottle of imported beer as a weapon, and found myself staring right into the vampire’s bloodshot, green eyes. She smiled, showing off her elongated canine teeth. I swallowed hard and fumbled with the bottle. Her smile fell away to uncertainty as she brushed back her long dark blonde hair. The party was over. I swallowed down the beer as I headed for the door.
Danny was my last best friend. He was the one who invited me to the party. I knew he wouldn’t believe me if I tried to warn him. He never did. He liked chasing crazy girls. A few years ago a he went out with a girl named Erica, a self-described witch. He still had the scar from her ceremonial dagger. Maybe he could handle a vampire.
Cool air cut through the alcoholic haze as I headed to my car. The vampire was following me. I could hear her boots on the gravel driveway.
“So, are you the only one?” I kept walking, hoping I’d make it to the car before she killed me.
“At the party, or-?” she said, getting closer.
“Both,” I said.
“There are so many posers these days.” She smirked and stepped forward. A shadow fell across her face. Orange eyes smoldered in the darkness. “Looks like there’s a few others in there too. They’re nothing like me though.”
She spun on her boot heels and pointed back at the house. Light hit a police badge pinned to her jacket. It looked real. Somehow, I doubted the cop gave it to her willingly.
“Are they your servants, or your coven or something?” I said.
“Fuck no.” Her upper lip curled back in disgust. “They probably followed me here. Fucking scavengers.”
“Why did you come here tonight, why are you after Danny?” I said.
“No reason, just went out and followed the music, the noise, all those people talking,” she said. “It’s like a surfer kicking their legs in front of a shark.”
I slid my hand into my pocket while trying to keep eye contact and wondered if looking right into her glowing eyes was a good idea. I found the folding knife I carried. It was the kind you could open with one hand. The steel didn’t feel reassuring.
“Danny, is that his name?” She took another step, closing the gap between us. “That guy’s such a fuckin’ creep. So what is he, like a friend of yours or something?”
I took out my knife and flipped it open. A sharp metallic click echoed through the night. The vampire’s eyes locked on the blade, then she smiled. A gleaming white canine caught on her lip.
“What the fuck?” she said. “You’re a vampire hunter, aren’t you?”
“People actually do that, huh?” I said.
“Yeah, they do.” She looked back at the house. “You have to be one. You can see me.”
“You mean see what you really are.” I shifted the grip on my knife.
“Yeah,” she said.
I backed up against my car and groped for the door handle. She held out her hand, three inch claws tipped each finger. I jumped back. Her claws scraped the door and the automatic lock popped up.
“Shit,” I said.
She opened the door and motioned for me to get in.
“Sit with me for a while,” she said. “I just want to talk to you. You can bring your knife, if it makes you feel better.”
I got in and put my left hand on the wheel, the knife in my right. Adrenalin burned through the alcohol in my system. The vampire appeared at the passenger side window and clicked her claws on the glass. The lock popped open. I looked straight ahead as she climbed in.
“My name’s Heather,” she said.
“Mike Ellis,” I said
She offered me her hand and I took it without thinking. The cool flesh made my jump.
“Heather the vampire, huh?” I said.
“Yeah, it was one of the names I used back in the Eighties, then it kinda stuck,” she said.
Moonlight reflected off a heavy gold cross that hung around her neck. Angry red burn marks stood out on her pale skin.
“There must be half a dozen of them in there,” she said.
“The other vampires,” I said.
“They used to be vampires,” she said. “We call them revenants, but nobody really knows that much about them. They can’t plan past the next sunrise. They’re kinda like animals. We used to waste ‘em whenever we saw ‘em. These days, nobody cares anymore.”
Heather tilted her head down and smiled, showing way too many of her teeth. I thought about predators like wolves that make humans think they’re smiling.
“I saw one of ‘em dancing with your friend,” she said. “She stole him when I went to see you. Bitch just moved right in. Like, she must still have some glamour left. He didn’t run away”
“So, Danny’s still alive?” I looked back at the house and grabbed my door handle. Heather seized my arm, her fingers dug in.
“Not for long,” Heather said. “Shit, she’ll pry kill him right there in front of everybody. Those freaks don’t give a shit.”
“I gotta do something.” I tried to pull away. She let go, looking uncertain of what to do next.
“Nothing you can do in there, except die,” she said. “There’s too many of them.”
Heather sunk into the seat and put her boots up on the dashboard.
“They’re gonna kill everyone at your party.” She kicked the dashboard. “They probably started already. It’ll be all over the news. People will freak out. When the cops can’t deal with it, then other people will show up. People I don’t want to meet again.”
Heather punctuated each sentence by driving a well worn, but highly polished, boot into the dash. The glove box split, sending broken plastic pieces to the floor. I threw up my hands and looked back at the house. Everything was dark now. I rolled down the window. An unsettling silence had replaced the pounding music. Heather noticed it too. Three figures descended the front steps.
“Is that them?” I said.
“What do you think?” Heather said.
I could barely see their blood splattered, misshapen faces under the yellow streetlights. Jagged teeth and claws dripped with blood and viscera. A short, dark haired, apparently female revenant pointed right at us. She tried to smile, blood gurgled and poured back out of her engorged body. I turned the key. Three sets of glowing eyes made their way across the lawn towa
rd us.
“Drive,” Heather said. “There’s somebody I want you to meet.”
*****
There was no way I wanted to meet any of Heather’s friends, but I didn’t want to meet the freaks that were coming across the lawn either. So I threw the car into gear and drove right over the curb. Steel scraped on concrete and I winced. I sped in a straight line through worsening neighborhoods, hoping I’d get pulled over. Heather sharpened her claws on my upholstery like an angry cat. It sounded like she was hyperventilating. I didn’t ask why a vampire needed to breathe.
“Gonna tell me where we’re going?” I said.
“Turn here.” She pointed at a dying industrial park.
Most of the old factories had closed in the Eighties. One by one they’d gutted the buildings and sent the usable machinery overseas, leaving empty shells behind. An ancient mill loomed over everything at the end of Integrity Drive. It was the kind of structure that rose up along with the town at the end of the Nineteenth Century. Heather didn’t need to tell me that the massive pile of brick and stone was our destination. I pulled into a parking lot that once held hundreds of cars. A pack of city-dwelling coyotes looked up from a disturbingly large shape as we passed. My headlights lit up their eyes. The coyotes stood their ground. I looked back at the pack in the rear-view mirror. The shape on the ground was moving.
“There,” Heather said.
I pulled up to a truck dock. Heather got out and walked to one of the overhead doors that trucks once used to pick up and drop off their loads. She raised a hand with theatrical flourish. Black claws grew from her fingertips. Heather stood, back-lit by my headlights, and tapped impatiently on the decaying metal with her claws. The door groaned to life and spooled up. Heather waved me in.
Dozens of expensive cars were parked under migraine inducing red lights. A man with long white hair appeared at my door. I cracked my window.
“Park anywhere, senor,” he said.
I found a place by the door, in case I had to get out of there in a hurry. Deep down I knew I was fooling myself. The Spaniard stared at us from his post at the door. I took out my knife and pretended to clean my nails. He laughed and opened his canvas duster, revealing a silver studded pistol belt. Two nickle plated revolvers reflected the red light. The Spaniard’s weapons were the only part of him that wasn’t covered in dust.
“Come on,” Heather said. Her voice turned seductive and human again. “This way.”
She put her arm around my shoulder and pushed me across the empty mill floor. A Southern style, plantation house occupied the center of the vast, mostly empty interior. I stopped and stared at the insane sight. Shapes moved silhouetted against the windows.
“It belonged to the guy who built the factory,” Heather said, “then it was like, used for storage or offices or something.”
“How the hell did it get in here?” I said.
“They moved it in here piece by piece, from out front,” she said. “It like, reminds Lee of his childhood.”
“Lee, is that who you want me to see?” I said.
“Yeah, he’s in charge here,” Heather said.
I imagined hundreds of vampires working all night, reassembling the huge, two-story structure inside the empty mill, brick by brick. I followed Heather up crumbling marble steps. Two vampires in suits stood rigid on either side of the doors. Their eyes narrowed as they recognized Heather. She stopped, adjusted their ties and brushed the dust off their shoulders. The guards glared but remained motionless. Heather pulled the doors open and we walked in. Hundreds of vampires danced to some kind of jazz, under a mirror ball. Human victims swayed zombie-like under the flashing lights.
Just inside the ballroom, two M-60 machineguns waited, mounted on tripods and leveled at the doors. I picked up one of the magazines they’d stacked around the guns like sandbags. The cover featured stories about Pia Zadora and Ronald Reagan.
“What the fuck?” I said.
“Oh yeah.” Heather looked at the machineguns and cocked her head. “I remember when we set those up.”
“Why-” I said.
Heather held a finger to her lips. The vampires had started to notice us. I realized it was too late to turn back. Since I was dying a little bit every day in the call center, I decided to follow Heather and see where the night took me.
The interior of the plantation house looked like an abandoned thrift store. I sidestepped stacks of VHS tapes. Seventies era stereo equipment sat piled next to top-loading VCRs and microwaves. The paintings on the walls were the only things I’d seen that weren’t covered with dust. Each painting depicted vampires doing, what I’m sure they thought were heroic things.
One of the paintings stopped me cold. A female vampire stood over countless of mangled bodies, a long curved knife in her hand. Behind her, a drum kit, mic stand and guitars waited on a makeshift stage. Flyers for unremembered local bands covered the walls. A huge video camera sat on a tripod. The artist had thought to include a bloody hand print on the camera. The vampire wore Eighties style heavy metal gear. Even with the crazy big hair and make-up, I could tell it was Heather.
“So, you commissioned a painting of your victory over a music video shoot,” I said.
“Lee did.” She ran her fingers across the frame. “He was really happy with how everything worked out that night.”
“What did they do to-” I said.
“They fucked with Lee,” she said. “A lot of ‘em were human, but they were under their control.”
“Who’s they?” I said.
“The band,” she said. “They used the crowd to attack us, but it didn’t do them any good.”
“Looks that way,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Most of their groupies were vampires too. They made up this like, last line of defense. You should have seen the look on the lead singer’s face when Lee decapitated the last of those dumb bitches. They really thought they were hot shit.”
“Damn,” I said.
“The painting’s from Lee’s point of view. He got to kill the lead singer.” She studied the painting. “I think Lee had the artist make my ass look big.”
I looked at the painting, then down at Heather’s butt. She growled and slapped my arm playfully.
“Fucker,” she said. “Come on. I don’t want to hang out here any longer than I have to.”
*****
We found ourselves standing in front of a massive set of doors. Rusty, padlocked chains were coiled around the handles. Heather paused, inhaled nervously and tapped her knuckles on the door. The padlock clicked open and the chains uncoiled themselves to the floor. Hinges squealed as the doors swung open by themselves. Behind us, several vampires watched in horror from the end of the hall. Heather smirked and waved at them. Flickering candlelight illuminated the room in front of us.
“Hello Heather,” a cold male voice said.
A tall shirtless man lounged on a black leather couch. Two nude female vampires relaxed on either side of him. His vampire brides? I wondered how many he had. The blonde bride stroked the his long black hair.
“How’s it going, Lee?” Heather said.
The dark haired bride sat up and glared at Heather. She arched her back, thrusting her pale breasts forward. I swallowed hard. Her blue eyes made me think of a timber wolf I’d seen at a zoo when I was a kid.
“What do you want, Heather?” she said.
Heather ignored her and locked eyes with Lee.
“Who is this, Heather?” He pointed at me. Growing claws tipped each finger. “Or should I say, what is this?”
Heads turned and everybody was staring at me. The Blonde’s eyes narrowed. Wolf Eyes mouthed the words, what the fuck. I crossed my arms, trying to look tough.
“He’s some kind of hunter,” Heather said.
“You crazy bitch.” Panic crept into Wolf Eyes’ voice. “You’ve done some fucked up things before, but-”
“A vampire hunter, really?” Lee cut her off. His accent kept changing as he s
poke. “Then why don’t I sense you? The last time I saw a vampire hunter, well I killed him. I felt him coming miles away. He tried to sneak into my wonderful home.” He held up his arms, motioning around the room. “I have heard of some kind of hunter that can, well never mind.”
“Destroy him.” The Blonde pointed at Heather. “Then destroy her, for bringing a fucking vampire hunter into our midst. You think he will ever forget where we live?”
“I agree,” Wolf Eyes said. “I volunteer to kill Heather. There’s no telling what she’ll bring here next. Perhaps some government agents to take us all away to Project Sixty-Four.”
“You two are in charge here, huh?” I said.
Lee tilted his head back on the couch and laughed. The Blonde’s claws extended. She drug them across Lee’s chest, splitting his pale flesh to the ribs. He didn’t even flinch. No blood flowed from the cold, gray wounds.
“I am sure our dear Heather has some excellent reason for bringing this, uh, person here,” Lee said. “Also, I doubt we have to worry about Project Sixty-Four anymore. The Corps of Engineers filled the bunkers with concrete, after they napalmed the entire complex.”
“The problem we discussed before is getting worse. You know, the real one, that somebody has to deal with soon.” Heather cut her eyes at the brides. “He can help us. I mean, who better to deal with them.”
“So.” Lee stood. “You are here to request employment? Such a thing is not without precedent.” The wounds on his chest started to close. He raised his eyebrow and smiled. “Well?” I blinked and Lee was right next to me.
“Of course,” I said, trying to play along.
The Brides writhed together on the couch, lost in their own desire. I was no longer a threat to them, just a casual annoyance. They drank blood from each other’s breasts and moaned in ecstasy.
“So be it.” Lee’s voice boomed through the room snapping my attention back from the insane vampire sex show on the couch. “You may not harm anyone under my protection.”
