Alison walked over to the bureau and began to undress. As she slipped off her watch and placed it beside her keys, her eyes fell on a wooden picture frame standing in the corner. It held a black-and-white 8x10 photograph of her parents taken during the policeman’s ball a few month’s before her father’s death. Her mother wore a light blue chiffon gown, her father his Cambridge Police Force uniform. The badge from that uniform hung off of the frame’s upper right corner, with her own hanging on the left.
She barely remembered her father because he died in 1974 in the line of duty before her first birthday. He had been called to investigate a suspicious package outside of a Harvard University research facility that was rumored to be developing biological weapons for the military. The rumors were exaggerated. The facility had been working for the U.S. Government, but to develop influenza vaccines. The suspicious package turned out to be a home-made bomb that detonated, killing her father. No group showed enough courage to step forward and admit responsibility. And because so many radical, anarchist, and fringe groups existed in Cambridge at that time, the authorities never determined who planted the device. Some malcontented sociopath got away with murder, her father received a state funeral, and her mother became a shell of a woman who never recovered from depression and a broken heart.
Despite the death of her father, the police influence in the Monroe household never diminished. Her father’s friends dropped by regularly to check on Alison and her mother. These were old-style cops. Most had joined the force after returning from overseas following World War II and Korea. They walked a beat, and knew those neighborhoods as well as they did their own. Cop killings were almost unheard of, and televised high-speed chases non-existent. Over time, these men became surrogate fathers. From them she learned the qualities that would later carry her through life. Duty. Respect. Honor. Integrity. It seemed only natural, then, that upon graduating from college she joined the Boston Police Department.
What she never anticipated was how those qualities would be so severely tested on her first assignment.
When first informed that she would be assigned as Drake’s partner, Alison had been excited. Drake’s reputation as one of the department’s more intuitive cops meant he often received the more difficult and high-profile cases. Fulfilling her rookie assignment with Drake guaranteed that she would be assigned to a case that permanently would affect her career. Alison got her wish.
A thousand fold.
After slipping out of her work clothes and into a silk nightgown, Alison crossed the bedroom and grabbed a flannel robe from the end of the bed. She stepped out into the living room and over to the balcony doors that looked out over the city. The Capitol jutted above the skyline, its dome bathed in the white glow from scores of floodlights. Beyond that stood the Washington Monument, with the Lincoln Memorial in the distance. The city appeared so elegant. Peaceful. Safe. Many people called Washington home. Others viewed it as the seat of government. Some defined the city by it businesses or its tourist attractions. Alison saw beyond all that. For her, Washington was the latest battleground in a millennium-long war between good and evil.
Alison first joined this struggle back in Boston almost a year ago. Around the time that she had been assigned as Drake’s partner, the Night Stalker case came to prominence. It involved three gruesome murders. A hooker. A petty drug dealer. And a college coed from New Hampshire. Each was believed to have been perpetrated by the same killer. The only thing in common among them had been the manner of death, with each body being completely drained of blood. No one could agree on what type of psycho committed the murders. Naturally, the case fell to Drake.
Over the next month, the killings increased in number and brutality, culminating in the slaughter of a family of four in their home. The discovery of the blood-drained corpses and surrounding carnage changed Drake. A consummate loner, he uncharacteristically took in the family’s pet rabbit rather than have it sent to a shelter to be put down, claiming he could not bare to be responsible for allowing another life to be ended. His deepening obsession with stopping the Night Stalker led him to entertain any theory about the killer, including the absurdity that the killer was a vampire. By now, most of the department labeled Drake as a head case, just another cop who had suffered a breakdown under the stress of the job.
At first even Alison thought Drake had gone off the deep end, though she never admitted as much. She stayed with him not because she believed they were hunting vampires, but because she respected Drake and wanted to make sure he did not harm himself or some innocent bystander. At least until that first encounter with the creature in the Boston Common. It was the first time either of them faced a vampire, and it almost was her last. She expected to run up against your typical serial killer, not the undead. If not for Drake, she would have been killed that night, or worse, become one of them. Yet in saving her, Drake allowed the creature to escape.
The next time they encountered the Night Stalker, events turned out differently because this time they were prepared. Thanks to Professor Reese, they knew exactly what they were fighting and how to defeat it. That final battle took place in Old South Church. Drake saved her life yet again, but not before destroying the thing once and for all, and burning out the church and half the city block.
Drake was forced to leave the police force because of the Night Stalker case. To Alison’s surprise, the commissioner agreed to let her stay on the force without so much as a reprimand. Drake advised her to accept the offer, but Alison refused. Drake had saved her life. Twice. She would be damned if she would repay Drake by letting him take the fall. So she resigned from the force and followed Drake to Washington to hunt vampires for a living. Thanks to some brief but intense training in the martial arts and hand-to-hand combat, for a change she had been able to save Drake’s life on many an occasion.
Besides, after what happened in Boston, she could not look at that city in the same light anymore. Though born and raised there, Boston now held too many unsettling memories for Alison and too many potential horrors.
As she looked out over the Washington skyline, she could not help but feel those same feelings brewing for this city, too. Only this time Alison could not walk away. Not until her and Drake had cleaned out the city of vampires.
Alison sighed. If the last few weeks were any indication, that would not happen anytime soon.
Heading back into the bedroom, Alison climbed into bed and stretched out, allowing her body to sink into the silken-sheeted mattress. Only then did she realize how tired she was. That realization did not last for long, for within minutes Alison fell asleep.
* * *
TONI STORMED DOWN the corridor of the time-ravaged Federalist-style row house, her heels clicking off the faded hardwood floors and echoing through the empty rooms. She slammed open the door to the foyer with such force that it bounced off the wall and banged into her shoulder as she passed through. Shadows cast from a dozen candles danced along the paint-chipped walls as she turned onto the massive stairway that wound up to the third floor. The shadows swirled and merged into one, progressively growing the higher she ascended. Not so the anger that raged within her. Toni had tolerated Ion’s shit for nearly eighty years, and finally had reached a breaking point.
Ion used to be the best. Or more precisely, she and Ion used to be the best. He had sired dozens of vampires in his thousand-plus years. Yet none of them shared the special relationship he had with Toni. Not just because they were lovers. Ion and Toni fed off of each other’s lust for violence and depravity, a lust that had plunged Europe into an orgy of carnal darkness. For nearly six hundred years they had terrorized Europe, hiding their bloodlust behind the region’s numerous wars and natural disasters. Many a village had been paralyzed with fear at the mere mention of the names Ion Zeilenska and Antoinette Varela. Many a lover had come to their bed as a sexual conquest and left as a minion of the undead. Many a hunter had died a bloody and painful death trying to add Ion and Toni as notches on their stakes.
All that ended in 1933. Ion brought the coven to Ukraine where he hoped to exploit the political disarray caused by the Sovietization of the region. It turned into a bloodbath. Their own. None of them anticipated that Moscow would react with such violence. In centuries past, the coven had concealed their feastings by hiding among the people they fed upon. Who could have foreseen that the local commissars would seal off Ukraine and slaughter hundreds of thousands of their own people just to kill a handful of vampires, hiding the fact that they had waged man’s only successful war between the living and the dead behind the façade of collectivization and mass famine. Seven million died between 1932 and 1933, but the Soviets had nearly succeeded in wiping out the coven, slaughtering a dozen masters and hundreds of vampires. Only Ion and Toni survived the holocaust, and just barely. It became the greatest loss in the two-thousand-year history of the vampires.
The incident in Ukraine changed Ion. The nobleman from Bulgaria who had charmed Toni into joining the undead as a master, and whose coven had feasted their way across Europe for centuries, after 1933 became decadent and sloppy. Ion now preyed on humans not just for food but to satisfy his sadistic pleasures. He grew careless in his stalking, showing little or no concern for covering his tracks. Over time the new members of the coven became the same way, engaging in a bloodlust of hunting that eventually attracted the humans’ attention. At that point, Toni should have taken over the coven and restored order. Instead, she protected Ion and covered up his mistakes.
But Toni had not fully protected the coven, and now the Master had taken notice.
Approaching the twin doors to the master bedroom, Toni noticed the right side remained open, allowing her to hear a commotion on the other side. She slowed down and listened. Intermingled with the rustling of bed sheets, she heard a feminine moaning, a mixture of fear and pleasure. Gently pushing the door open, Toni peered inside.
Ion knelt in the center of the bed. His raven black hair cascaded down his neck and over his muscular shoulders. His white shirt, unbuttoned and dangling outside his trousers, exposed his burly chest. The same chest Toni had straddled many a night when they concluded their feeding with an orgy of lust. She began to feel her own desire burn between her legs when a whimper drew her attention to the end of the bed. A young girl, barely sixteen years of age, pressed herself tightly against the headboard, her legs drawn up against her chest and clutched by a par of spindly arms. Matted hair stiffly fell across dark, hollow eyes wide with fear. Faded, dirty clothes hung loosely on a body that had eaten little in several weeks. Ion reached out for the girl’s dirt-encrusted hand, but she drew her arms and legs more tightly against her body.
“We had a deal,” Ion said in a gentle tone that barely masked the menacing tinge in his voice. “I’ve taken you off the streets. Now you must fulfill your part of the bargain.”
The girl swallowed hard and took a deep breath, then hesitantly held out her left arm. Ion cupped her hand in his own, and with his left hand pushed the frayed sweater up over her forearm. He leaned forward and kissed her wrist, moistening the skin with his tongue. In an instant, the handsome Balkan features morphed into a pallid, protruding, and deeply furrowed forehead, the blood-red eyes gleaming in anticipation of a meal. Fear filled the girl’s eyes, but she did not withdraw her arm. Ion pulled her wrist to his mouth and bit. The girl closed her eyes and throatily moaned.
After a few moments, Ion stopped drinking and leaned back onto the bed, his breathing rapid. As his excitement waned, Ion’s face softened into its human visage. Without taking his eyes off the girl, Ion pushed the shirt off of his left shoulder and scraped a finger across his left breast, creating a two-inch rivulet of blood.
“Your turn,” he beckoned.
Without hesitation, the girl uncurled herself from the fetal position and slowly crawled across the bed. She lowered her face toward Ion’s chest and paused, seductively licking her lips. She looked up at Ion, her eyes seeking permission to continue. Ion clasped her by the back of the head and pushed her toward the wound. She sucked hungrily. Clutching her hair, Ion pulled the girl closer into him.
Toni’s rage boiled over. By exchanging blood, Ion was turning the little slut into a master beholden to him. A plaything for his perverse desires. Someone to fuck around with while Toni picked up the pieces of his negligence. No more. She had had enough.
Shoving the door open, Toni barged into the room. “Can you quit your whoring for five minutes?”
Ion turned to Toni. Grasping the vagrant by her hair, he pushed her mouth even further into the dead skin of his chest, eliciting a throaty moan from the girl. He smirked at Toni. “Jealous?”
Toni ignored the taunt. “I just talked to Chiang Shih. She’s not happy about the other night.”
“She’ll get over it.” Ion returned his attention to the girl, caressing her hair. “She always does.”
Crossing over to the couple, Toni grabbed the girl by the hair and dragged her off of Ion. The girl screamed. Toni flung her off the bed onto the floor, watching unsympathetically as the girl scrambled backwards into the corner and cowered. Toni spun around to face Ion.
Ion already had jumped out of bed to confront her. “Need I remind you that I’m in charge of this coven?”
“Then act like it. A few more incidents like the other night and the humans will start hunting us again.”
“The coven’s security is your responsibility, not mine.”
“No. Your job is to enforce discipline within the coven, and you’ve fucked that up. While you’re taking sluts to our bed, the coven has become sloppy and careless. Just like in the Ukraine.”
“That’s enough,” Ion bellowed, his human incisors morphing into fangs in anger. “Be careful. You can be replaced. You are not the same woman I sired.”
Toni refused to back down. “I could say the same about you.”
“What do you mean?” Ion asked threateningly.
“The vampire who sired me would never have let Drake Matthews live this long.”
Ion huffed. Turning, he walked away. “He’s merely a nuisance.”
“A nuisance doesn’t take down seven of our coven in three months.”
Ion stopped, clenching and unclenching his fists as he tried to control his anger. But the furious quiver in his voice belied his seemingly calm demeanor. “And I suppose you can do better?”
“Of course.”
“Then Drake Matthews is yours.” Ion turned to Toni and smiled, his anger replaced by an unsettling calm. “Do with him as you please.”
“I will,” Toni answered defiantly.
“Just so long as the next time we talk you tell me that Drake Matthews is dead.”
Before Toni could respond, Ion walked over to the twin doors, swung them inwards, and glided into the darkened corridor. Once again he had shirked his responsibility. But he gave the task of protecting the coven to her, and she would not fail. Toni would save the coven like Ion once saved her back in Ukraine.
A whimper caught Toni’s attention. She looked into the corner. The vagrant whore pulled her knees against her chest and tightly clasped her legs. Her eyes, wide with terror, focused on Toni. With Ion gone the poor thing feared for her safety. With good reason.
Toni lunged. The girl started to cry out, her scream being choked off as Toni’s hand clutched her throat. Toni pulled the girl to her feet. Letting go of her throat, Toni traced the back of her fingers along the girl’s neck and caressed the back of her head. The whore closed her eyes, moaning softly. Clearly this one would do anything to stay alive. Suddenly, Toni grabbed the girl by the hair and yanked her head back. Toni’s once beautiful face transformed into the vampire’s hideously-furrowed forehead. Shocked out of her silence, the girl attempted to scream. Toni plunged her fangs into the girl’s throat, turning the cry into a gurgle as she fed. Digging her fangs deep in, Toni ripped out her throat. As the girl’s lifeless body crumpled to the floor, Toni ran a pair of dead fingers across her blood-stained lips, licking th
em clean.
Soon Toni would be savoring the blood of the hunter.
* * *
A SMALL VILLAGE 100 KILOMETERS north of Donetsk, Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Summer 1933. Holodomor. A bastardization of the phrase moryty holodom, to inflict death by hunger. A very apt description, thought Ion Zielenska.
That was how the Ukrainian peasants referred to the famine forced onto the region last summer by decree of the Communist Party leaders in Moscow. There were numerous theories to explain why the Kremlin chose this strategy. Most peasants thought it was an overreaction by party apparatchiks in response to Ukraine’s failure to produce a harvest large enough to meet its quota. Others thought it was Moscow’s attempt to crush a growing bourgeoisie that posed a threat to Stalin’s socialist rule. Conspiratorial types believed the ultimate goal was political, to punish the wayward province for not falling into line behind Lenin’s successor. In either case, the end result was the same – more than seven million Ukrainians starved to death over the past year.
Only a few such as Ion knew the truth.
He moved closer to the second-story window of the grain warehouse just outside of the village, taking special care not to allow the sunlight filtering in to fall on him. No one was in sight. But it was still early in the morning, and he did not expect the Russians’ inactivity to last much longer. They would not stop now, not when they were so close to their goal of eradicating the first vampire nation.
When Ion first heard of the plan just over a year and a half ago, he was excited. Everything seemed to have fallen into place. The world was in the middle of the Great Depression, and no one paid attention, let alone cared, what went on inside the Soviet Union. Stalin was too busy consolidating his power in Moscow to pay much attention to what transpired in the countryside. Ukraine presented a power vacuum ripe for exploitation. It was why Ion, Antoinette, and eight other trusted masters were sent to the region to establish a nation of the undead, the initial step in their goal of obtaining dominion over all mankind. At the time, Chiang Shih described the plan as a brilliant strategic move that would ensure the vampires’ ultimate victory.
The Vampire Hunters: Book I of The Vampire Hunters Trilogy Page 4
