by David Salkin
Roy was seeing the skulls in the furnace in his head. “Excuse me, but how do you potentially partially eat someone?”
“Thank you! I am glad someone is listening to me,” she said. “I say potentially, because none of the reports say it in so many words. No coroner’s report, no crime scene report—no one will come out and say that the killer is drinking blood or eating chunks of his victims, but if you read carefully and go back far enough, you can see the same thing over and over again. There are a hundred crime scenes without substantial quantities of blood, even though the victims were brutally murdered. There are cases with victims missing organs, for God’s sake, and no one thought that was significant? There are cases of body parts found in the city that were dead ends. I went back to the archives and even some newspaper stories back in the 1940’s. Now—I’m not saying for sure that some old guy is running around eating people in New York…but I am saying that if there was one, it sure as hell is possible.”
“Okay, so it’s possible. I think we all believed it was possible after what we’ve been seeing so far. How does any of this help us catch this sick fuck?” asked Roy.
“What we have so far doesn’t help us get ahead of him. We still can’t develop patterns or find some type of MO. What we can do, is tell the chief that this is connected and open up a wider investigation. If this killer has in fact been at this for so long, I’m sure he has gotten quite good at covering his tracks. We are going to need more help. We can’t get ahead of him yet, but maybe we can at least try and catch up to him.”
“Is there any commonality with locations at all?” asked Captain Rosetto. “I mean, can we narrow it down even a little bit?”
“No. I have cases like this in all five boroughs, even though I am only working Manhattan right now. I have calls out to the State Police and FBI crime labs. The Feds are supposed to be calling me back today or tomorrow. Believe it or not, they are actually aware of some of what I was tippy-toeing around. I mean, I didn’t use words like werewolf or vampire or Dahmer or anything, but they knew what I was getting at. They actually have a guy that specializes in this shit. I can’t wait to talk to him. Anyway—what have you guys found?”
Tim looked at Pat. “You want to start?”
Pat cleared his throat. “Okay—this is what I have so far, and everyone keep your wiseass comments to yourself. I would never say any of this outside this room because I know I’d be sent on mandatory visits to the shrink. The skulls in the warehouse were obviously three different people. But DNA testing on other bone samples came up with a total of seven victims. One of the victims does match a missing person from last year. A woman named Rosa Santos with several priors for solicitation went missing last February. There was DNA on file, taken from her apartment, in case a body was ever recovered. We pushed the bones to the top of the pile over at the lab and she came back. Twentythree years old, lived on forty-sixth and sixth, last seen near Central Park by her ‘friend’ who we know was her pimp. Homicide looked at him for her murder, but never could put anything together.”
Heather crossed her arms. “What about the other six in there with her?”
“I should hear something any day. But it was Dr. Valesi’s comments about the skulls that have me at a loss. He said he ran every canine impression in his library, and even a Bull Mastiff doesn’t have fangs long enough to do what this guy did. A mastiff is a big fucking dog, people.”
“So what does he think it was?” asked Tim Rosetto.
“He says something between a lion and a saber-toothed tiger. No shit. That’s what he said.”
“That’s great, man. It shouldn’t be too hard to find a prehistoric cat running around New York. I mean, even in this city, somebody would probably notice a saber toothed fucking tiger,” said one of the men sarcastically. “What the fuck are we supposed to do with that?”
“I have no idea what you’re supposed to do with it. I’m just telling you what the doc told me. It is not anything that fits anything he ever came across before. He sent bite reconstructions to the FBI office. Probably to the same guy that Heather is waiting on,” said Pat. “Doc Valesi also gave me the name of another guy who now teaches over at NYU. I paid the guy a visit and asked him about the bite reconstruction model that Valesi made. The guy is an anthropology professor.” He looked around apologetically. “I know—it sounds ridiculous. I’m just going where the doc pointed me. This professor kept me in his office for two hours looking at old books that showed pictures I am not even going to discuss here.”
“Oh, come on, man. If he told you anything that can help us, don’t hold out on us,” said Tim.
“It’s ridiculous,” said Pat quietly.
The men all started talking at once, now curious about what the mystery professor was talking about.
Pat raised his hands. “Fine. You want to know what I listened to for two hours? Urban legends. Two hours of werewolves and vampires and myths that have been handed down for a thousand years in all parts of the world. I didn’t know whether I should laugh or cry. You can’t even imagine the shit he made me sit through. But…”
Everyone waited. Finally, Heather asked him. “But what?”
“One of the stupid fucking stories had a picture in it. Some medieval book about superstitious bullshit. The picture in the book matched the bite reconstruction model pretty closely. It was just a legend. It just… it just looked like the fucking model.” He was staring at the table, obviously embarrassed and maybe a little shaken up.
“And what did it look like?” asked Lt. Alexander.
“You don’t even want to know,” replied Pat quietly.
“Of course I want to know. We all want to know! What did it look like?”
“Some kind of fucking
vampire . The story was about how some undead thing killed an entire village over the course of a year in some remote part of Eastern Europe. It’s old legend. It’s fictional bullshit. It just so happens that it fits.”
Nineteen
VWX
Friday, preparing for Date Night
Adam was actually nervous about “going out on a date”. You’d think that when a man reached two hundred or so years old, he’d be smoother about such things, but Adam hadn’t been on anything resembling a date since he ate Renee back in 1861. He was determined not to eat and drink Sara if it was at all possible. At least, not on the first date.
Adam looked at himself in the mirror. His color was still excellent, his eyes nice and blue, and his skin must be warm to the touch since he was still able to use his breath to fog the mirror in his bathroom. Most of the time, when his heart wasn’t beating and breathe wasn’t coming out of his lungs, his skin was cold and white, and his eyes were silvery. That was when he knew it was time to feed. While he could eat every
• 110 • day and always keep himself more “human”, the complications that came with so much murder would eventually cause him problems, and he knew it.
As Adam’s thoughts drifted back to feeding and times past, he remembered more than one situation that had gotten him caught, and if he could be killed, those were the times when he must have been closest to his own demise.
While Adam was never sure why the thing in the woods died the day it infected him, he did know that the creature, his creator, had eaten heavily before the attack. It must have been feeling quite “alive” as Adam did after he ate. Perhaps it was when he was alive and his heart beat with the blood of other mortals that he was most vulnerable? It was one of many theories, but he still wasn’t sure. Adam had been “wounded” many times, but only “hurt” once. While feeding, it was common for his prey to fight back. He actually enjoyed that, as it made the victims pump the endorphins and adrenaline that he coveted so. During those times over the decades, he had been shot, stabbed, slashed, pummeled with clubs, bats and pipes, even burned. What he noticed was that as soon as he fed, the wounds disappeared very quickly, and his appearance was never permanently scarred. Except that one time. His thoughts tr
aveled back a hundred plus years.
Back in 1864, while traveling with the Union Army near Cedar Creek, he was enjoying the “spoils of war” and eating several wounded men in some woods the way he usually snuck his meals. Adam, by that time already using the name Adam Priest instead of Olmer Bartha, would stay with a unit as it fought, disappearing occasionally to feed, and then often times join up somewhere else. He was never questioned about disappearing, as he would do it during heavy fighting, and missing and dead soldiers were too numerous to keep track of. When he reappeared before battles, he would be shoved into line with the others, and no one ever took notice of the undead soldier living among so many other “walking dead”. On one particular day, after heavy fighting gave way to sunset, both sides fell back into protected positions to camp for the evening. Adam snuck off, feeling a strong desire to feed after seeing so much blood all day.
Adam moved quietly into some woods, where some wounded union soldiers were resting in a glade, trying to tend to each other’s wounds as they awaited a corpsman. Adam’s lust was beyond control, after smelling fear, sweat, testosterone, adrenaline and endorphins in such quantities they were intoxicating. At one point, a cannonball had removed the head of a man nearby and sprayed Adam and several others with brains and blood as they pressed forward. Only Adam licked his lips and snarled, wanting to suck out the warm liquids from the man’s open neck, while the others fought back the urge to vomit or just start running away. Unbeknownst to Adam, it was his own growling and howling that inspired the men around him to push forward and attack amidst the shelling and musket fire that rained down on them.
When Adam quietly entered the glade, he found a man on the ground, braced against a tree and holding his stomach where he had been “gut shot.” Adam glanced around, and seeing no one nearby, leaned over to comfort the injured man. He bit through the man’s throat and drank heavily, crazed by the day’s events. When he had sucked the man dry, he moved through the woods silently, finding another man not far from the first. He drank that man dry as well, overfeeding to the point of nausea, but was now in full blood lust with claws and teeth showing in the dim light. His eyes were darkened to blue in the dim woods, and his face was covered in blood and entrails. He moved to the next victim, who was also leaning against a tree, his left leg wrapped with a tourniquet above a shattered lower leg. Adam’s heart was pounding with the blood of the first two victims, but he could smell this man’s blood as it bubbled from under the make-shift bandages. He moved slowly towards him, eyeing the pulpy lower leg as he licked his lips between blood soaked fangs.
The man on the ground, a Union major, eyed the thing as it came towards him. He was at first quite sure he was seeing the Devil himself, coming to take him to Hell, but then realized the Devil was wearing a Union infantry uniform. The thing was moving towards him slowly and quietly, its mouth covered in blood and bits of flesh. It was eyeing his pulverized leg and salivating on itself. As it moved in to feed, the major raised the pistol that was in his hand and aimed it square at the thing’s chest. He fired the large Colt and watched the thing spin wildly before hitting the ground. The creature looked down at its own chest and saw blood pumping from the large hole. The major saw a look of surprise on the thing’s face, and then pain. It howled loudly, filling the woods with a sound that made every survivor’s hair stand up.
The major raised his weak arm a second time, using every ounce of strength to pull the hammer back for a second shot, but the creature pounced. The animal, wounded and screaming, leapt onto the prone man and used clawed hands to tear the man’s head from his body. The major’s head came off with a pop noise, and Adam shoved his face into the geyser of blood, slurping and sucking up the arterial spray like a man at a water fountain. He fed until he was vomiting the blood back up, and then slowly moved through the now-dark woods to drop and rest. As he lay on the ground, he became aware of a pain in his chest and back. The large caliber bullet had passed through him, something that had happened many times before, but this time—it hurt.
Adam rolled onto his back, his claws and fangs slowly receding. He smelled blood coming from his wound. It was the mixture from the three other men. He listened to his own heart pumping with their blood, but instead of feeling strong from the feeding, he felt weak. He smiled. It felt so human. Adam spent the night listening to men cry all around him from the dark woods and battlefield beyond the trees. It reminded him of Jena. He could hear hearts stop beating. He could feel death around him—smell it even. It was delicious. He passed out, weak and in pain, but feeling total ecstasy.
When he awoke at first light, there were orderlies in the woods picking up wounded men in litters and carrying them to the field hospital. He sat up and felt strange. He slid a finger into the hole in his chest, and was surprised to find that it hadn’t yet completely healed. The hole was clammy and raw, but did not bleed. He pondered that a moment. Perhaps when he was full of blood and his heart beat like a living human, he was vulnerable? Would the wound heal? He was playing with the hole when two corpsmen approached him.
“Hey, corporal. You better come with us. The doc should give that a look-see. You feeling okay enough to stand?”
Adam stood, and felt almost normal. “I’m fine,” he said quietly. “See to the others.”
They looked at his uniform, covered in blood, and at his pale face with silvery eyes that looked like those of a dead man. “I think you ought to come with us, friend. You been shot,” said the young corpsman, walking towards him.
Adam looked at him and snarled, with anger creeping into his voice. “I said I’m fine. Move on.”
The corpsman shrugged and walked away. It wasn’t so uncommon for soldiers to avoid the surgeons, especially if they had limb wounds and didn’t want to face the saw. “Suit yourself,” said the boy, disappearing into the woods to find another bloody mess of a human.
Adam left the woods, rejoined an infantry unit, and fought for another two days before he was able to feed again. After that second heavy feeding, he was back to his old self, but noticed that the bullet hole did leave a scar in his chest. His one and only.
Adam opened his eyes and realized he was still in his bathroom. It was still 2011, and he still needed to dress for his date. He smiled and looked at the ancient scar on his chest. He pushed the questions out of his head and picked some clothes from his closet.
As Adam dressed, he pondered the evening ahead of him. Eating and drinking anything other than living blood and occasional small bits of tissue was out of the question. He had tasted wine before, and while he found the smells to be very pleasant, actually drinking the liquid would make him feel extremely ill. How would he “take the girl out” without eating himself? This was a logistical problem that would require creativity. He was intelligent—he’d think of something…
Twenty
VWX
The Date
Adam and Sara had decided to meet in Midtown. He had purchased tickets for a Broadway Show, an impressive first date. Money was no object to a creature that had been murdering humans for so many decades. Once, when he was going through a box of old money, he came upon a large stash of very old gold coins. He realized they were worth more than spending money, and a coin dealer in New York had paid him almost forty thousand dollars for coins he thought might be worth a couple of thousand. He had similar experiences with art and a few other objects of antiquity he had acquired over the decades. He could afford to “be a sport”.
Adam was standing on the corner of Times Square and Forty-Eighth Street awaiting Sara when her taxi pulled up. He paid the driver before
• 116 • she could do it herself, and although she tried to fight him for the fare, he could see she was already impressed with his chivalry. He smiled at her when she got out of the yellow cab, and she kissed his warm cheek a cheery “hello.”
It was only six o’clock, and their show wouldn’t start until eight. They had planned to have a quick bite before the show, although not the type of bite
Adam would have preferred on most such encounters.
“So nice to see you again, Adam,” she said with a smile as she linked her arm through his. “You still haven’t told me what show we are going to see…”
He looked at her and watched her smile with great satisfaction. He had somehow put that smile there himself, and found that quite interesting after so many years of causing reactions that were so different.
“Perhaps you like surprises,” he said mysteriously, his own blue eyes sparkling back at hers.
“Ooooh,” she cooed, feigning great intrigue.
“Hungry?” he asked. He could smell her perfume and hear her blood rushing hard in her throat. Her heart was beating slightly faster than normal. She was excited to see him, and it made him smile even broader.
“I could force myself, I’m sure,” she said looking at his smile.
He thought about how he would like to force his teeth through her thigh, but resisted.
“Do you like sushi?” he asked.
“Oh my God—are you kidding? It’s my favorite food,” she said. She cocked her head and eyed him suspiciously. “Seriously—did I mention that to you already, or do you like it, too?”
“I love it. I know just the place,” he said. Prior to picking her up, he had thought long and hard about how he would pull this “date thing” off. He recalled having eaten fish a few times in his life when he was desperate to feed. They were cold blooded creatures and their blood was nothing at all like a mammal’s, but their oils and flesh were digestible so long as it was very fresh and uncooked. It had been decades since he had touched a fish, and he had stopped at a sushi bar to try it again before he picked her up. He found it barely tolerable, but it was all he could think of that would pass in front of Sara.
They walked, arm in arm, down a few streets until they came to a sushi bar that had a small line outside.
