by N. P. Martin
"The vampires are in there?" I said in a hushed voice, as if the creatures inside the factory could hear me.
Frank nodded. "According to my source."
Frank's comments drew a question to mind, one I couldn't avoid asking. “What sort of source lives close enough to such squalor and menace, Frank? You haven’t even told me why you’re hunting them. Or don’t you need a reason?"
"If you're asking if my source might be someone you think we should be hunting, I'd tell you to think about whether only human assets would be able to provide all the info we need. Just as Narcs often have to deal with users as CI’s, we have to get our hands dirty as well, seeking out those who can provide info we'd never be able to learn without them, even if those informants are from the other side, so to speak.
"Getting back to your original question, though…I’m not that into vamp hunting. But as their menace is mostly physical, especially those who aren't originals or ancients, they do provide a good measure of testing whether trainees are cut out to do what we do."
I nodded. "I see, and obviously I’m one of those trainees."
"You are."
"So I’m taking it one of these vampires showed up on your radar, as you put it?"
He nodded. "Yeah, one of them abducted a Senator’s daughter a couple of nights ago, right from her home. Her father, the Senator, was able to get satellite footage of the vamp as it made off with his daughter. One of the advantages of being a Senator, I guess."
"So why didn’t the Senator just call the proper authorities if he thought his daughter had been kidnapped? Surely he didn’t know it was a vampire who took her?"
"It would surprise you to know how much people in positions of power and authority know about the world in which we operate, but on this occasion, it took me confirming his suspicions before he took any action."
I shook my head as if I didn’t understand. "Why would he call you in the first place, Frank?"
"Like I said, Senators and plenty of other people in power know things. The Senator knew who to call."
"Which was you."
He nodded. "That’s right."
I smiled as I shook my head slightly. "Well, look at you, all connected and shit."
"It’s part of the job, Leia," he said. "Connections make the job easier. You’d do well to remember that."
"I will," I said, then thought of something that made me frown. "So will the Senator’s daughter be a vampire now too?"
Frank shook his head. "No, not yet anyway. Vamps, especially the older ones, are notorious for abducting humans and using them as playthings."
"So you think this vampire is using the Senator’s daughter as some kind of plaything?"
"I do, which is good for her, because it means she won’t be turned for a while, not until the vamp gets bored with her anyway. He’ll just keep the girl docile and subdued as he has his way with her."
"That’s fucking sick."
"Yeah, it is, which is why we need to save her, and we do that by killing the vamp controlling her. Any blood bond he has over her will be gone, the hold he has through drinking her blood dying with it."
"Even if she’s a vampire too?"
"If the vamp who turned you is killed, you’ll return to a human state again, yeah. I can’t speak for your soul, though."
I shook my head at the thought. "So how many are in there?"
He shrugged. "Not sure. Older vamps usually keep a small group of neophytes—a coven—around them to do their bidding. I’d say no more than half a dozen, maybe even less. We’ll see."
"How do you kill them? With stakes or something?"
"You can do it that way, or you can cut off their heads."
"Which one are we doing?"
"Guess."
Outside the car, Frank popped the trunk as I stood beside him, looking around. "You weren’t kidding about there being no one around. It’s…eery, like a ghost town."
"The vamps would’ve picked off anyone who hung around here," Frank said. "Junkies mostly. Here."
I turned to see he was holding a machete toward me, grip first. I took the machete from him, surprised at its weight. "You use this to kill them?"
Frank was now holding his own machete. Both weapons looked well-used, and I wondered how many vampires they had killed. A lot probably. "It’s easier to use than a sword. Being blade heavy, instead of well balanced in the way swords typically are, it gives better momentum to give the blow the weight it needs to cut through the neck bones. Swords are balanced in a way that makes them good for defense, as well as for stabbing and slashing, besides being something that generally requires considerable practice. All good reasons as to why in this context a machete is better suited."
He suddenly swung the machete, the blade cutting through the air only inches from my throat. "Aim for the neck, obviously. Swing hard and fast. Most importantly, don’t hesitate..at all. Rest assured, the vamps inside won’t hesitate to kill you."
I nodded, suddenly feeling the seriousness of it all.
"You ready?" Frank asked as he stood beside me.
I didn’t feel ready, despite the intensive training Frank had given me, but I wasn’t about to tell him that, or allow myself to admit it.
This is who I am now.
Whether that was true or not, I still wasn’t sure.
But there was only one way to find out.
"I’m ready," I said.
18
But for the moonlight shining through the holes in the roof, the factory would’ve been pitch black inside. Frank made sure we both had flashlights before we went in. "Keep the talking and the noise to a minimum," he whispered as we went in through the front entrance. "Stay on your guard. Follow my lead. The girl we’re here for won’t look like the other vampires. She’ll look pretty much human. The others will look like…"
"What?" I asked.
"Monsters. The sort that used to plague our nightmares until paranormal romance writers came along and painted them as some sort of pseudo-sexual alpha males and females for a populace who secretly have fantasies of the sucking kind."
Okay…
I nodded silently at him as tension spread out from my stomach, along with a stirring arousal of my grace. Training to fight monsters is one thing, I realized, but actually fighting them is a whole other thing.
Yeah, especially when you’ve never even fought one before.
The only knowledge I had of vampires was what I read in my mother’s journal, and in the books that Frank gave me. My mother wrote about how fast and vicious the creatures were, which made them dangerous and hard to kill. In her journal, she described most vampires as being nothing more than mindless animals, many of them hardly even human in appearance. She did say that the older vampires looked more human, though they could shapeshift into other things if they wished. Needless to say, the higher up vampires were much harder to kill, and much more dangerous. At that point, as I walked quietly beside Frank into the darkness, even a rat would’ve seemed dangerous to me, such was the fear suddenly coursing through my body. Given all of this, it seemed like an exceptionally dangerous first foray into the deep end from my point of view, especially given that the vampires had the numbers and that we were on their home turf…in full darkness. Maybe my mother was right about Frank being a poor role model, though it was too late to change anything now.
Just do what Frank taught you to do, I told myself, which didn’t make me feel any less afraid. I knew then, if I wasn’t going to completely crumble under the pressure of the situation, that I would have to get a handle on my fear. So I thought about Josh, and how much he needed me (in my mind anyway). I also thought about my mother, what a badass she was, and the long tradition of hunters that I belonged to.
You were made for this, I told myself over and over as Frank and I descended deeper into the factory. My senses had heightened thanks to the grace simmering within me, just below the surface. I could hear every drip, every creak of metal, every door blown by the wind com
ing through the broken windows. The smells in the place were sharp and rancid, as if a stack of dead bodies lay within the building somewhere, filling the place with the fetid stench of rotten meat. I even thought I could sense the coppery taste of blood in the air, although that could’ve been my imagination.
Frank halted in one of the hallways suddenly, as if he’d heard something, causing my heart to beat faster in my chest. I made a face at him, as if to say, What is it?
He shone his flashlight down the dark hallway, just as a hissing sound emanated from one of the rooms near the end. It was no animal sound, that was for sure. Come to think of it, I hadn’t seen any signs of vermin in the place yet. My experience of abandoned buildings was that that they always stank of piss and shit thanks to rats and pigeons. It was as if the vermin knew better than to hang around in the place, or as if they had all been exterminated by the vampires.
Frank pointed one finger down the hallway, and then motioned for us to move forward, putting away his flashlight and taking his gun out from under his jacket as he did so. Following his lead, I took my own gun out as well, surprised at how much comfort its reassuring weight gave me. I knew bullets couldn’t kill a vampire, but they would slow one down long enough to kill it with a blade. That was according to my mother’s journal. I’d soon find out if she was right.
I was also surprised that I could still see quite clearly in the relative darkness of the factory as I moved alongside Frank down the hallway. I had noticed the difference before, of course, but my ability to see in the dark seemed to have increased, though that could’ve been just the adrenaline flooding my system.
In any case, I didn’t have any more time to dwell on it, as the source of the hissing suddenly showed itself in the hallway. I froze as the creature remained crouched several feet away, half its body in shadow, the other half illuminated by the pale moonlight coming through the roof and windows. The vampire looked human, but in the worst way possible. Its naked, hairless body was mottled white, the skin smeared with dirt and what could only have been blood, some of it looking fresh in its crimson appearance. The vampires once human face was so twisted and ugly, it was hard to believe it was ever human at all. As for the vampires former sex, it was impossible to tell, due to the fact that all external genitalia retracted once someone was infected. It was only one thing now anyway, and that was a vampire, pure and simple.
Frank’s shots made me jump. I was so transfixed by the vampire and its burning red eyes, that I hadn’t noticed him raise his gun and fire a number of shots at it, shots which it somehow managed to dodge by moving at a speed that almost belied belief.
"Jesus Christ," I breathed, hardly knowing what to do. Do I shoot at it? Do I run? Any sane person surely would!
By the time I could decide on a course of action the vampire was on the ceiling right above my head, hissing down at me, and for the first time, I noticed the mouth full of needle-like teeth nestled between two longer fangs. It’s eyes were right on me, full of viciousness and blood lust, as if it only saw me as a blood bag and nothing more. I started to raise my gun to shoot at it, but as I did, it suddenly released its grip and dropped toward me, its claws tensed and ready to puncture my flesh.
But then I felt Frank’s arm slam into my chest as he forced me out of the way of the vampire, which landed almost silently on the floor right in front of me. Before it could move any further, Frank shot it twice in the head, taking off a large chunk of its skull, its jellied brains slipping through the cracks.
Not that the vampire seemed to mind, as it went to jump at me. But Frank swung his machete at the same time, slicing the vampires head clean off, its decapitated body landing near my feet. "Fuck!" I exclaimed as I jumped back.
Frank stared at me, seemingly unfazed by what just happened. "Hey," he said. "Use your weapons, or you’re going to get hurt. Remember your training."
"Yeah," I said, slightly breathless. "All one month of it."
He grabbed my arm then. "Get it together!"
I stared into his intense brown eyes; eyes that left me no choice but to comply, and to realize that if I didn't put up a fight, I might not even make it out of the warehouse to go on and save Josh. "Okay."
Frank nodded back as he let go of my arm. "There’ll be more coming. Stay alert. And Leia?"
"What?"
"Try not to shoot me."
I shook my head at him, but he had already started walking again, so I followed beside him as we headed down another long hallway, further into the belly of the beast. By the look of things, Frank was leading us toward the center of the factory, a place I assumed he thought the head vampire would be. Going by the worsening smell, I’d say he was right.
I held my gun up as I moved carefully along, ready to shoot this time if another vampire appeared. When we came to an intersection in the hallway, we stopped and I looked down the left hallway as I heard a sort of clicking sound getting nearer, like the sound of long fingernails hitting the floor. I swallowed hard as I peered further into the darkness, about to use the flashlight when I suddenly made a shape in the gloom. A moving shape, crouched low to the floor. Then a pair of glowing red eyes appeared in the darkness, and my heart skipped a beat when I realized it was another vampire.
Turning to Frank, I was about to tell him about the approaching creature, but as soon as I did, I saw immediately that two more of them were coming toward us from the hallway opposite us. "I got one on my side as well," I whispered.
"Get ready," Frank said in a low voice, his gun now pointing at the two vampires, one of which appeared to be crawling along the wall like a spider.
I didn’t need to ask why I needed to get ready. The sound of Frank’s gun—deafening in the confines of the hallway—told me all I needed to know.
Turning quickly, I went to aim my Glock at the vampire on my side, but I frowned when I saw it had gone. It took me a moment to realize that it was crawling along the ceiling, and was now only a few feet away from me. Without thinking, I drew a bead on the creature and fired two shots at it, only one of which seemed to hit, but it was enough to elicit a squeal of pain from the naked creature as it fell from the ceiling. Immediately, it regained its composure, my bullet having only punctured a hole in its shoulder. It crouched there, baring its fangs at me, just as I became aware of a scuffle behind me, which must have been Frank fighting the other two vampires. I didn’t dare turn around though, for I knew if I did, the vampire facing me would attack, and I’d be done for.
I knew I had to kill it.
So I fired at it again, and the vampire managed to dodge every single bullet due to its lightening speed. Before I could even curse, I suddenly felt the weight of the creature slam into me, forcing me to the ground, the gun skidding from my hand when I landed. I managed to hold onto the machete, but the vampire pulled it out of my hand and tossed it away. I don’t know how I was able to keep its snapping jaws away from the soft flesh of my face and neck, for the thing was deceptively strong. Somehow, I was able to, though. This probably had something to do with the grace coursing through me, soothing my sympathetic nervous system, and bringing a certain level of calm to my mind, washing away most of my fear in the process.
Time seemed to slow at that moment, the way it had before, when my grace seemed to take over, as it was doing now. The vampire above me was still snapping its jaws at me, but it seemed to be doing so in slow motion. Suddenly there was time to properly assess my situation. Not only that, I found myself analyzing on the spot how the biomechanics of the vampire worked: how it moved, the weaknesses in its stance, and when it was most off balance. It was suddenly crystal clear to me that the vampire had most of its weight on its left side, and that I needed to move it in that direction to get it off me. My arms were already above my face as I blocked the vampire’s bites. All I had to do was strike its neck with my forearm, leaving the arm there to use the creatures neck as leverage so I could slide myself quickly out from under it. With little conscious direction from me, my arm slam
med hard onto the vampire’s neck, a strike that was made more powerful by the grace flowing through me. The vampire yelped and stopped its frantic motions long enough for me to slide out from under it, and then spring to my feet.
Before it could defend itself, I threw a punch that was fueled by pure grace, and which landed on the back of the vampire’s neck, slamming the creature face first into the hard floor. I stared down for a second as it lay there barely moving. Turning, I looked around for the machete, and found it a few feet away, returning to the vampire just as it was getting up off the ground. Taking a step back, I allowed it to get up. When it stood to its full height and leered at me, I swung as hard as I could at its neck. I was shocked how easily the blade went through flesh and bone, lopping the creature’s head clean off. As a result of putting all that power into the swing, however, I overbalanced and almost fell. One for the learning list, I thought, as I regained my composure.
When the vampire’s body fell to the floor, I couldn’t help but stare down at it. A thrilling sense of sheer satisfaction overcame me. It was like nothing I’d ever felt before. Even my grace didn’t compare. All I can say is, I had never felt more complete than I did in that moment.
Typical, I thought, that it takes decapitating a fucking vampire for my life to finally make sense!
A gunshot down the hallway soon made me realize that there was no time to dwell on existential victories, at least not yet. Frank was clearly still under attack.
Picking up my gun, I headed down the other hallway to find him standing over the bleeding body of a large vampire who was clearly in need of, not only a heap of vitamin D, but also a half dozen tampons to plug the bevy of holes Frank had put in its body.
"Where’s the other one?" I asked.
