The first on our list is a nurse. Her uniform is hanging on the door of her wardrobe. Working at the hospital, she has been relatively well fed. She wakes up just long enough to scream, the sound dying in her throat as the light goes out of her eyes. By the time they have finished with her, her whires are smeared with thick, menstrual-looking blood.
Our second victim is a security guard, asleep in his uniform on the sofa in his tiny lounge. The TV blaring muffles the sounds of his short cry before his head is severed. The consistency of his black blood suggests he’s been faring little better than the nest at the warehouse.
Just two hours after our raid began, we knock down the door of a bartender, whose bad luck it is to still be awake. He takes one look at us, his eyes wide in terror, and drops the glass in his hand. He breaks for the nearest window. Doesn’t make it. The contents of the glass, and his thin, but still dark, blood, which smells faintly of fruit, tell me he’s been surviving on blood brandy smuggled in from the continent.
I can’t stomach it, can’t summon any rage, because they are not feeding. They are dying in their beds, their bodies as human and frail looking as Libby’s.
After that, I do my bit, silencing alarms and keeping the coast clear, but I don’t get involved. I don’t spill any blood, and turn my face away in distaste at the sight of the bodies. I feel violated, and ashamed. It’s like being dragged round on the fringes of a lunatic bunch of vegetarians who have gone on the rampage, declaring all meat eaters must die. I have to get out of here.
I STICK MY head round a door after a raid on a flat, where three vampires were living above a pub. The walls are sprayed with blood, some of which looks suspiciously human. Either one of them had not long been turned, or someone was caught in the crossfire. Either way, the clean-up crews are going to have their work cut out for them here. The place is littered with body parts.
Sam, Vinnie, and Nell are lounging on the dining table; Dillon and Jax are standing at the breakfast bar of the open-plan room, their heads bowed in conversation.
My eyes bug out and my mouth falls open when I realise what Sam and Vinnie are doing. They are eating the flesh in raw chunks. So much for them being vegetarians. Sam’s face and chin are covered in blood, a hunk of flesh dangling limply from his hand. Vinnie is holding a heart, squeezing it over a glass, the thick liquid dripping through his fingers. Nell, desperate to please, is swallowing delicate little morsels, trying not to gag in her efforts to win Sam’s approval.
My palms are sweating, blood pounding in my ears. My stomach lurches. I have to swallow hard to keep the bile from rising in my throat.
Disgust replaces the shock.
“What the hell are you doing?” I yell at them, “You’re no better than the vermin if you can’t control your urges. You’re just vampires with a pulse!”
Nell drops the piece of meat in her hand, turning away from me. Vinnie looks at me, and it’s clear he’s never considered the issue. He continues squeezing the heart, raising his hand up in the air and then bringing it back down, the way Libby squeezes a lemon. He’s not about to waste valuable neurons on it now, either.
Sam laughs at me, and waves the chunk of meat, beckoning me to join them. He is a lecherous old git, and he repulses me, but I’m afraid of him. He is the oldest and meanest of The Breed that I have ever met, though I know he has superiors in London. I don’t want to meet them. I didn’t want to meet Sam, or any of them, for that matter. But none of the others freak me out like Sam does.
Dillon is OK, even if I can’t keep my thoughts to myself around him. Nell is a bit of a whiner, and I wouldn’t trust her out of my sight. Jax is a joker, but distant, permanently angry, and Vinnie is just a dumb thug. Sam, though, is a mean-tempered and powerful man, as muscular as he is ugly, and horny to boot. I guess that’s why he’s obsessed with breeding the army he thinks is going help him rule the world.
My anger and revulsion must be evident on my face as I stare at him, but he just waves the piece of flesh, dripping the thick tar around, and calls to me.
“Come and earn your teeth, Max.”
I am horrified, and have to fight the urge to heave. I recoil from him, shaking my head, and stepping back into the corridor.
Nell is leaning on his shoulder simpering, but he shrugs her off and swaggers over to me. She throws a sullen look at his back and then her eyes move to me, narrowing into feline slits. His hands and mouth are still covered in tar. As he approaches, he shimmies from side to side, moving as if to put his hands on my hips.
“Come on, baby, you know you want to. Unleash the dark side.”
I back away from him again, batting his hands away.
“Don’t be so skittish, kitten, papa won’t hurt you,” he thrusts his hips at me and pulls his hands down in fists, his wide, flat lips twisted into a grotesque grin. “Well, not much.”
I feel the adrenaline begin to flow, clench my fists. A low snarl rumbles in my throat and escapes my lips. The others start to pay attention. Nell’s eyes flash wide as she glares at me in open hostility. Vinnie turns, forgetting about the glass and trailing thick drops of blood over the table. Jax nudges Dillon, who looks up from the paper in his hand and walks over to Sam. He places a hand on Sam’s arm and turns him round, trying to show him the paper, which looks like a map. Sam is still laughing, but allows Dillon to guide him away. Leering back over his shoulder, he sticks his tongue out and flicks it up and down suggestively.
I feel the hot, acrid taste of bile in the back of my throat, and turn and run from them, taking the stairs a flight at a time. Sam’s hawking guffaws ring in my ears, joined by Nell’s glassy cackle. My cheeks are flushed with fury as I step out into the cool air, but I just keep running. I know I shouldn’t be moving at this speed on street level in broad daylight, but I’m past caring.
When I’m out of sight, I lose my breakfast, continuing to dry heave long after the contents of my stomach have gone. My head is spinning and my throat burning as I blink back stinging tears.
I CAN’T FACE the thought of any more bloodshed, and duck out of the rest of the day’s activities. I wander around the city in a stupor, watching the humans coming and going in blissful ignorance.
I end up sipping a steaming latte in a coffee shop, where I watch the other patrons, hoping to feel some connection; to see something that justifies the horrors I’ve just witnessed.
A young mother reads a glossy magazine as her toddler fidgets untended in his pushchair. He waves his arms and kicks his legs, gurgling in a wordless song, trying to get her attention. I smile. Maybe this is what makes it all worthwhile? The boy starts shouting, and then screaming, and still she doesn’t look up. Finally, when the remarks of the other patrons filter through to her consciousness, she scolds the boy. She gathers her things and hurries out, her face burning with embarrassment; resentment and anger emanating from her in waves.
A couple in their thirties are arguing over estate agent’s particulars. He flicks through a pile and thrusts one at her.
“Too small.”
“What about this one?”
“Eugh, the state of the bathroom? No, it needs too much work.”
He sighs, and pulls one from the bottom of the pile.
“Are you kidding? Can you honestly see yourself raising a family there?”
After a brief pause, she pushes three across the table to him. He looks at them without picking them up.
“Too expensive.”
I don’t mean to eavesdrop on their thoughts, but before I know it, I’ve slipped into a light trance, and they are coming through loud and clear. She thinks he’s being cheap and doesn’t want to commit to her. She’s right about the second part.
I deliberately tune their thoughts out and watch in the mirror as a youth in jeans and a sweater kneels beside an old lady behind me. He appears to be tying his shoelaces, but then he reaches into her open bag and makes for the door.
I stick my foot out as he passes. He goes sprawling on the floor, the purse fa
lling open beside him. Before he has scampered to his feet and out of the door, I have retrieved the purse and its contents and returned it to the woman, who hadn’t even noticed it was gone.
“Excuse me, but I think this is yours?”
She eyes me suspiciously and counts her money, before dropping the purse back into her bag. She zips the bag closed, and places it on the other side of her seat, away from the aisle, without a word of thanks.
I leave the rest of my latte and wander back out onto the streets, feeling no better. This, I remind myself, is what we are protecting. I can’t see anything to convince me it’s worth the effort.
LATER, WHEN WE regroup after the raids, divesting ourselves of the unused weapons and putting them back into cabinets and lockers, I keep my distance. Sam and Dillon discuss the plans for the next phase of the city raid, poring over Dillon’s map.
They are debating the perimeter of the search area, drawing circles with their fingers. Sam seems intent on maximum chaos, outlining the whole city. Dillon is trying to warn him about the consequences.
“We can’t afford a human backlash, and we’re almost out of time. No, we need to focus our efforts around here.”
Dillon’s target zone excludes my own neighbourhood, an area populated by human families with no known vampire residents. It’s an area where the doctors, lawyers, and other professionals live between local business owners. All big, old houses where roof hopping is difficult and night prowlers stand out.
“Burning in hell for eternity is too good for the vermin filth.”
Sam spits, and his eyes flick over to me. The contempt in his eyes and his curled lip conveys he hasn’t forgotten my outburst, and doesn’t think much of me because of it. I make no attempt to hide my disdain for him, either, refusing to be cowed.
“Just watch your bloodlust doesn’t cloud your judgment. Just because we have orders to wipe out the bloodsuckers, doesn’t mean we have complete immunity. They won’t stand for that kind of infringement.”
“They’ll damned well stand for whatever it takes.”
Sam’s face darkens and he grinds his teeth. He doesn’t like having his authority questioned, even by Dillon, who has been with him the longest, and is the only one he trusts. He isn’t stupid enough to risk losing the support of the human authorities, though. His little war depends on them too much. Without the police cleaning up the mess, the general population would learn the extent of the situation and panic. Neither The Coven nor The Breed could afford that.
We might be difficult to kill but none of us are immortal. The humans still control weapons they could turn on us and wipe us all out. If that happens, Dillon says, any man not wearing a flak jacket and running is as dead as the next.
“We concentrate our efforts on this area,” Sam draws a circle around the region Dillon indicated, not including my neighbourhood, “then spiral out if there’s time.” He redraws his original larger circle, which does.
“There won’t be time,” Dillon doesn’t back down, and the two stare at each other. Sam grunts, and rolls up the map.
I slip out unnoticed, glad to be rid of them all for the evening.
Double Duty
I KNOW, AS SOON as I slam the door, that something is wrong. The house is in darkness. I hear the TV on in the den, but when I check, Libby isn’t there. Howard isn’t in the basement, either. I rush round the house, frantic, until I see Libby sitting alone in a chair by the window in the dining room. She is motionless; her eyes unfocused.
“Libby?” I run over to her and jostle her shoulder when she doesn’t respond. “Libby, what is it?”
After what feels like an age she stirs. Her dark teal eyes swim then come back to centre. She looks at me as if she doesn’t recognize me. Then panic grips her, and she starts babbling.
“Cu vampirii se indreapta spre… El s-a dus… ei vor sa-l gasesc. Sa ii opreasca. Nu-i lasa sa-l omor”
She is reverting to Romanian, her mother tongue. My grasp of the language is basic, but vampirii doesn’t need much translation. Dus, I think, means “gone,” and gasesc, if my memory serves me, is “find.” Opreasca I know means “stop,” it’s one of the few words she used regularly when I was a child, and omor, means “kill.” Not one of the first words most people learn in a new language, I know, but one that crops up too often in my surroundings. I don’t have time to decipher the grammar, but with those four words, I have all I need to know. Howard is gone.
“Damn it mother, I told you not to let him out all this week, didn’t I?”
It’s not fair of me; it’s not as if she could have stopped him. Now, if anything happens, she will blame herself as long as she lives. I get a flash image of Howard as she sees him, thin and drawn, tired and worn down.
“Maxi, don’t call me that.”
Her voice is flat and weary, but at least she seems herself again. I feel for her. It always has to be Libby and Howard, never Mum and Dad. It raises too many eyebrows, with their different genetic make-up and different rates of ageing. When they met, people took him for her father. Now, she’s beginning to look old enough to be his mother. The ambiguity allows us to stay together, at least.
“I’m sorry, Libby, it’s not your fault. I know that,” I start to leave, “it’s just he really shouldn’t be out there tonight.”
“How bad can it be?” Libby tries to make light of the situation; to reassure herself more than me. “It’s the last night, right?”
“Exactly,” I shoot the reply harder than I mean to and she flinches. “It’s the last night of a zero-tolerance policy raid on the city. That means all the nests have been dealt with, The Coven fraternity is broken, and The Breed’s prowlers will be doing one last sweep of the city. They will be actively looking for him this one night. It’s the worst possible night for him to be out there.”
Her fear is palpable. It makes the air thick in my throat, with a peppery taste. For a second, I’m concerned her heart might give out, but she still has the constitution of a thirty-year-old. I guess all those years dancing paid off. It’s not her I need to worry about, for a change.
I SET OFF back out to find him, running through all the places he could be in my head. A nagging voice in the back of my mind tells me where to find him, but I can’t believe he’d be that stupid. He knows the situation. He can’t underestimate The Breed like that, after all he’s told me about them, and all I’ve seen, can he? Of course, I haven’t been able to tell him about today’s revelations, so he doesn’t know the full extent of the danger.
I recoil from the thought, unable to process it, and run both hands through my hair, grabbing handfuls and pulling on them until the pain registers and gives me some distraction from my panic.
Unable to face the reality of what he’s done, I try to convince myself he must have had some more innocent reason for leaving the house. I resist the urge to go straight there and decide to follow my usual routine, and do a quick once over the city. I need to make sure he’s not in any of the more obvious places first.
I bump into Vinnie at the “soup kitchen,” as Howard calls it, leaning against an ambulance. Doing my best to hide my frayed nerves, and thankful for once of Vinnie’s slow wits, I whistle down to him from the roof of a low building.
“Hey, Max.” Vinnie raises his head in greeting, melancholy despite his natural good humour.
“Hey, Vinnie.”
I raise my chin in return. It’s our habitual greeting, born of the fact that usually when we meet we need to silently communicate the direction of the prey. We have learned to pay close attention to each other’s body language, and Vinnie is on edge. His deceptively youthful, piercing blue eyes dart from shadow to shadow, his jaw clenching and grinding. The body-built muscles in his arms and chest strain at the simple white T-shirt he wears beneath the plain khaki shirt, open and flapping above his chinos.
“Any action?” I casually scan the area for evidence of misplaced blood, simultaneously skimming the minds of the humans present, but detecting n
o abnormal levels of fear. Of course, around here, their emotions are running high, so it would be easy to miss tell-tale signs.
“Na,” Vinnie is bored. Being stuck with sentry duty is not a good fit for his action-man mentality. “Couple of skank new-bloods earlier on. Nothing since, though.”
Vinnie’s head tilts to one side, a delayed thought registering.
“Here, Max, you pulling a double?”
“Kinda.” I’m aware that, if I don’t get moving soon, Vinnie is likely to try and dump guard duty on me, and head off into the fray. “I’m just going to do a fly-by of some of the usual haunts, get this thing put to bed so we can move on up to Birmingham. I hear there’s a real infestation up there this year.”
“Really?”
Vinnie’s face lights up at the prospect. His enthusiasm for the job disturbs me. It goes beyond the thrill of the hunt, the physical challenge of killing barehanded, into a realm of need, thirst, and desire for revenge I can’t fathom.
“Really.”
I want him focused on the next big job, distracted, just in case I’m wrong and Howard happens by here later. Fortunately, that is easily done. I can see him salivating already.
“Hey,” I call down to him in a low voice, “watch your chops.”
It isn’t an idle comment. He is in full view of the passing public, however distracted they might be by their own immediate problems. There’s a lot of blood around here, and self-control is not one of his strong points. I wouldn’t want one of them taking him for a vampire and raising the alarm.
I HEAD INTO the heart of the city, and consider the implications of the emphasis Vinnie placed on the word “you.” I must have the lowest kill count on record for a rookie slayer, apart from Nell. My lack of enthusiasm is no secret, so I guess it looks a bit suspect me being back out here tonight voluntarily.
Breed: Slayer Page 4
