by M. D. Massey
Blood Scent
A Junkyard Druid Urban Fantasy Novella
M.D. Massey
Modern Digital Publishing
Contents
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
1
I was at a bar, some random dive I’d stumbled into with bad intentions. I didn’t necessarily have bad intentions toward anyone else. They were for myself, mostly. I’d come here to drown my sorrows, to sit at the bar and get shit-faced drunk without hurting anyone or anything but my liver and a few brain cells.
I was already halfway to oblivion, drinking some happy hour concoction named after a body part likely to require routine waxing. It was a buck a drink and it contained alcohol, and that’s all I cared about. I was getting numb and close to not caring about a damned thing, and that was the only item on my agenda for the evening.
That’s when I noticed the guy at the end of the bar slipping something in his date’s drink. I’d been watching him since I’d arrived, mostly out of habit more than a desire to watch my back. Habit had also called for me to sit in the farthest corner of the room—where I had a clear view of the front entrance, restrooms, and every other patron in the bar.
It’s not like I cared if anyone snuck up on me. Heck, they were welcome to try. The average human might even get lucky on a night like tonight… and one of the fae or another supernatural creature had even better chances. I wasn’t worried. Say they got a lucky shot in, even a killing blow.
That’d just bring him out… and that wouldn’t be good for anyone.
So, I stuck to my usual habits—not out of self-preservation, but to keep everyone else around me safe.
All I’d wanted was a quiet night in a dive bar, and a few hours of memory loss. Preferably without a single supernatural denizen of the city in sight. That’s why I was pissed when I saw the guy roofie his date. It would’ve pissed me off in any case, but there was something odd about how he did it. His hands moved too fast for the normal eye to see.
My senses tingled. As a born champion, I was genetically gifted—or cursed—with enhanced strength, speed, reflexes, sight, smell, and hearing. Not superhumanly gifted, but certainly a cut above the average human. A black swan, you could say.
While helpful in some situations, it also made me a magnet for supernatural activity. Whether it was something in my genes that drew them to me or something in that same genetic makeup that made me seek them out, I had no idea. But every born champion was destined or doomed to run into creatures that normal people had no idea existed.
Most of us failed to survive our first brush with the world beneath.
And if you survived?
Usually you ended up like me. A monster hunter. Former monster hunter, in my case. Someone who’d made a career of dealing with the other side, and who likely regretted surviving that first deadly encounter.
Because no good ever came out of dealing with the other side. Not as an enemy, and certainly not as an ally. Someone always ended up hurt, or dead, or worse. Maybe a loved one, maybe a friend, maybe an innocent who just got caught up in their predatory games.
For me it had been my hunting partner and girlfriend, Jesse, who’d paid the ultimate price. That was why I had decided to tie one on tonight. At least until this prick fucked up my plans.
As for this girl, I could see why he was targeting her. She stood maybe five-foot-five—five-nine in those heels she wore—and when he cracked a joke, her smile lit up like Christmas at the Rockefeller Center. She was fit and had curves in all the right places—with dark-brown hair that fell in waves around her shoulders, and sea-foam eyes that sparkled when she smiled. But she was lower-middle class all the way, on the bottom rung of the life ladder in corporate America. Probably struggling to make ends meet—maybe with a kid or two at home, and a deadbeat ex who never paid his child support on time—and a month behind on her car payment.
The type of vulnerable individual who was just dying for someone, anyone to rescue them from a life that was just one miserable slog after the next, with no hope in sight. I knew the type. She could’ve been my mom before her art career had taken off, in those years after my dad had passed on. Lonely, desperate, and hurting.
The perfect target for a vampire.
Normally, if I saw something like that happen human to human, I’d tip off the bartender or security and let them handle it. But, in this case, the club staff simply weren’t equipped to handle the creep in question. That meant I’d have to handle it myself.
“Fuck.” I downed the rest of my incredibly nasty drink, trying to ignore the turpentine taste that meant the club refilled their bottles with swill. I dropped a fiver on the bar, nodding to the barkeep as I stood. “One more, if you don’t mind. And keep the change.”
She did as I asked. I grabbed the drink, swerving slightly as I made my way to the end of the bar. Most of it was intentional… some not so much. Just as I drew even with the couple, I pretend-stumbled and spilled my drink all over the guy’s shirt.
He stood immediately, giving me a look that said he’d have killed me if the girl wasn’t watching. He was tall, blonde, and handsome—unnaturally so. Well-dressed, in the manner that only people with real money could pull off. I checked him out as I swayed in place, feigning surprise at my faux pas. Thousand-dollar Buschemi shoes, Rolex Oyster, designer jeans, polo shirt, and Ralph Lauren sports coat. A vamp, for sure. Probably had gotten turned in the late eighties, I figured. Vamps often made that mistake—sticking with the same manner of dress that had been popular at the time of their demise and rebirth.
I decided to call him Crockett.
He busied himself with wiping off his shirt and pants with napkins from the bar, as the woman hid a smile behind her hand. I could sense his anger, even though he was trying to play it off so he didn’t lose his prey.
Whatever the woman was drinking, it was clear and bubbly. I decided to kill two birds with one stone.
“Oh, I am shlow sorry,” I slurred, weaving in place as I gestured at my handiwork. “That looks expenshive—here, I know what will take that stain right out.”
I grabbed her drink from the bar—the one that had been roofied—and tossed it in his face.
“Shit, I am shush a klutz. Here, let me help you, buddy.” I leaned in and grabbed the hem of my t-shirt, acting like I was going to use it to wipe his face.
The man backed up and raised his hands defensively. “It’s alright, I have it in hand.” He looked at his date. “Charlene, be a dear and wait for me here, will you? I’m just going to go to the men’s room and see if I can dry myself off.”
Something was up with his shirt, because the drink I’d spilled on him was barely noticeable. I leaned toward him with a gravity-defying motion that involved my whole body, nearly stumbling into him so I could get a closer look.
“Are you sure I can’t help wif zat?”
“Positive,” he hissed, then turned on his heel and stomped off to the bathroom.
I watched him enter the facilities, then straightened up and turned to the wom
an. “Miss, I hate to tell you this, but I saw that guy slip a roofie in your drink.”
Her eyes widened. “What? Raffy would never do that. I mean, he’s such a gentleman…” I grabbed hold of her as she nearly fell off the barstool and reeled like a drunk. “Oh, my. I do feel a bit woozy.”
That meant he’d drugged her already. Probably had done it again when the first dose hadn’t taken effect quickly enough. Damn.
“We need to call you a cab and get you out of here, now.” I called the bartender over. “She’s been drugged, and she needs a cab,” I told her. Charlene staggered again. “Scratch that, make it an ambulance.”
The bartender nodded as she reached for the phone. “Should I call the bouncer?”
I shook my head. “No, this guy’s dangerous. I’ll handle it.”
She looked me over and smirked. “You look a little young to be a cop. You ex-military?”
“Something like that.” She looked unconvinced. “I’m a bail enforcement officer, and the guy is a fugitive, alright?”
I turned and looked her in the eye as I said it, willing her to believe my story. Whether she did or not, I couldn’t tell. I took a deep breath and squared my shoulders as I monitored the bathroom entrance.
“If you hear a lot of commotion after I go in there, evacuate the bar.”
“Seriously? I can’t do that. It’s happy hour. My boss would kill me.”
“Just trust me, okay? And get her out of here, now.”
“Okay already. Consider it done.”
I listened for a moment as she dialed 911, then I headed for the men’s bathroom.
2
I pulled a silver-plated dagger from my Craneskin Bag with my left hand, and hefted a Glock loaded with silver-tipped bullets in my right. I placed the butt of the knife on the door, pausing before I pushed it open to enter the restroom. There was a short entryway, then the room opened to the right.
I sliced the pie, inching slowly around the corner—the same way cops and spec ops soldiers cleared rooms. I was careful not to flag my presence with the muzzle of the pistol. The idea was to get the jump on this vamp, not to get jumped.
Nothing. I ducked down and looked under the stalls. Strike two. I kicked open the stall doors, one at a time, gun and dagger at the ready.
Strike three. Damn.
I looked up and spotted an open window, high along the wall above the sinks. I debated letting the vamp go, then decided that as long as “Raffy” was out there, he was a danger to Charlene and other women. I needed to take him out before he tracked her down and finished whatever he’d intended to do to her.
And I doubted he’d wanted to surprise her with a mani-pedi.
I secreted the knife inside my jacket and tucked the pistol in my waistband at the small of my back. It was a crappy way of carrying a loaded pistol, but I just needed to hide it until I left the bar. The paramedics arrived as I walked out of the bathrooms. Charlene was sitting at a booth near the front, and the bartender was holding her up so she didn’t slip to the floor.
I waited until the paramedics began treating her, then used the distraction to slip out the door. I hated leaving the girl like that, but in my line of work—or, rather, my former line of work—it paid to be inconspicuous and forgettable. So, the fewer questions the staff and medics asked me, the better.
Outside the bar, I looked left and right to get my bearings. The bathroom was in the back of the club, but these buildings were built right next to each other with shared walls. I jogged around the block to the alley, sobering up as the reality of what I might be facing caught up to me.
Thanks to my other side, which always kicked in when I was near death, I wasn’t really in danger. Back when I’d first lost Jesse, I’d tried a dozen different ways to end my misery. None of them had worked. Then again, I hadn’t tried beheading myself or ripping my own throat out—or yanking my heart out of my chest. A vampire of sufficient age might be capable of any of those things, and I had no idea if my other form could heal from such a mortal wound.
Death by vampire. Maybe… I shook my head and cleared the thought from my mind. Dr. Larsen, my therapist, had instructed me to avoid entertaining such thoughts. It was a pointless exercise anyway, so I mostly did as she asked.
As I rounded the corner to the alley, it took me a second to catch my breath. Getting winded from such a short run was embarrassing, considering what I’d once been. I’d been taught how to hunt and kill fae creatures and monsters by someone who’d been doing it for thousands of years. If he saw me like this, he’d never let me live it down. But when you were dealing with chronic depression, it wasn’t like you had the desire to stay in shape.
But tonight—for the first time in quite a while—I felt all those old, familiar sensations: an elevated pulse, a tingling up my spine, and a heightened awareness of sound and movement. All the little things that make an adrenaline-junkie-slash-hunter go back for more, job after job and night after night. I had to admit, I was liking it—against my better judgment.
But I still had a vampire to deal with. I pulled the knife and gun. I cast a simple cantrip to enhance my vision, so I could see past the pool of light I currently stood in. City sounds and smells played in the night air around me: traffic from the other side of the buildings on the main drag, garbage and vomit from the trash receptacle nearby, and the sound of my blood rushing in my ears.
Oh yeah, I need this. Probably more than I cared to admit.
I stalked into the alley, my every sense on full alert. The cantrip began to kick in, and where there had been darkness a moment before, I began to make out vague shapes in hues of gray. Bags of garbage, dumpsters, empty beverage crates—that sort of thing. But no sign of my vampire.
Then, I sensed something above me. I rolled out of the way, just as “Raffy” pounced on the spot where I’d been standing. I came up in a kneeling position, firing off two shots as he pivoted and sped back into the darkness above.
Oh yeah, he’s a full-fledged vamp, I thought. I hadn’t really been sure, since some Renfields could exhibit vampire-like abilities, depending on how recently they’d been fed by their masters. Humans sometimes worked out symbiotic relationships with vamps, trading blood for blood. A smart master vamp would get several humans hooked on his heme, giving him a steady supply of food and day walkers to do his bidding.
But what they didn’t usually tell humans was that eventually, the vamp blood would turn them undead. And not sparkly-pretty vampire undead, either. No, at some point they’d either go ghoul or turn into a revenant—a sort of weaker, decomposing vampire. A zompire, if you will. Revs were dangerous, more so than ghouls; but that’s not what this guy was.
Nope, by the way he’d moved, he was a full-fledged Count Chocula. And I had no idea where he was at the moment. I decided to try to draw him out.
“The girl is long gone by now. I had the barkeep call for an ambulance. You may as well give up and go home. Or, you could come out into the light and face me. Your choice.”
There was no reason to tip the vamp off that I could see in the dark. Right now, he was hiding—probably on the roof of a nearby building. But if he didn’t know I could see him, I’d hopefully be able to spot him as he snuck about in the shadows.
A voice replied from everywhere and nowhere. “Yes, hunter, I am aware. I overheard your conversation after I retired to the bathroom. You see, I could tell you weren’t that inebriated. A man of your size couldn’t possibly be that drunk. I kept track of what you’d had to drink the whole time.”
Oh, this guy was a real peach. Not all vamps were so gifted. Most just came with your garden variety strength and speed. Others might luck out, and win the vyrus lottery. Vyrus was a purposeful misspelling, a combination of “vampyre” and “virus.” It was what gave vamps their powers. A lucky vamp, or one who was a few centuries old, they might get an extra power… the ability to fly, or turn invisible, or transform into another creature. But that was rare.
This guy could throw
his voice. It might have been a learned skill, but I doubted it. That indicated age or power—or both. I needed to be on my guard.
“So, you made me for a hunter. Whoop-dee-doo. That means you knew I’d follow you out here, too. Living on the edge, eh Raffy?”
The voice echoed from the other end of the alley. “I’d hoped you’d follow. Hunter blood is just as sweet as that of an innocent. Although, Charlene could hardly be considered pristine. She’s a bit used up for her age—but she would have been worth the trouble just the same.”
I waited several seconds, every sense attuned to the night. He’d stopped talking, which meant he was about to strike.
His whisper filled my ear. “But I suppose you’ll have to do.”
I stabbed back in an underhanded swing with the knife, just as he pinned my upper arms to the sides of my body. That negated much of the power in the motion, but I still connected with something and felt the knife sink into flesh. The vamp screamed in my ear—a blood-curdling sound that emptied his lungs. His fetid breath smelled of clotted blood and vyrus.
I stabbed a second and third time. He released one of my arms so he could strike me, or perhaps to take away the knife. Rather than spinning away like any rational human would, I went limp and dropped, narrowly missing a swipe from his hand that might very well have taken my head off. He was still hanging onto me with his other hand, but by turning toward him as I collapsed, I was able to bring the gun to bear.
I planted the barrel in his stomach and emptied four rounds into him. Normally on a hunting job, I’d load my magazines with specialty ammo suited for the occasion. But whenever I had no idea what I might be facing, I alternated ammo types as I loaded my mags.
