The Vampire Hunters: Book I of The Vampire Hunters Trilogy

by Scott M. Baker

  She immediately closed her eyes.

  Toni blacked out again, coming around only when the contraption she was in came to a stop. The crying and praying around her became louder and more frantic. A hand grabbed her by the hair and yanked her across the hard surface. She fell onto pavement, the jolt igniting every wounded nerve ending in her skull. More hands grabbed her by the arms, lifted her off the ground, and dragged her away. After a few seconds, whoever carried Toni dropped her face first onto the ground, sending more bolts of pain ricocheting through her head.

  Toni forced her eyes open. Her healing brain protested against the intrusion of light on her senses, but at least this time she could see, albeit through a blurred haze. A few meters away stood a horse-drawn trumbel, the wooden cart used by the Committee of Public Safety to carry the condemned to their deaths. Pierre and the paunchy bully stood by the rear exit shoving people off and herding them in her direction. Andre stood beside her, his face lowered and his eyes closed. Tears flowed down his cheeks.

  “Here’s a fine one.”

  Toni gazed toward the voice. An obese man with a white, sweat- and blood-stained shirt hovered over Toni. He had a long, deep scar running from his forehead, down across where his left eye used to be, and cutting across the lips until it ended on his chin. Toni repulsed in horror at his hideous visage.

  Scarface sneered at the insult. Hocking up a mouthful of phlegm, he spit it into Toni’s face. “Cunt.”

  Pierre joined him. “This is the last bunch for tonight.”

  “What did you bring me?”

  “The usual. Counter-revolutionaries. Profiteers. And a whore who wasn’t particular about the company she kept.”

  Scarface turned and climbed a flight of wooden stairs. “Bring them up.”

  The musketeers herded the others toward the stairs, prodding them along with their weapons. Once the prisoners began their ascent, the musketeer closest to Toni came over to inspect her.

  “What about her? She can’t even stand.”

  “Carry her,” ordered Pierre.

  Handing his musket to the paunchy man, the musketeer wrapped his arms around Toni and hefted her over his shoulder. “Damn, the salope is heavy.”

  “She’ll be a few pounds lighter in a few minutes.” Pierre laughed. “Now move.”

  As the musketeer lumbered up the steps with his load, Toni glanced around. Her vision had cleared a little, allowing her to make out objects at a distance. Off to her right, illuminated by the glow of scores of torches surrounding the square, she saw the front façade of Chartres Cathedral, its hundred-meter-high twin bell towers extending into the night, their spires invisible in the night sky. Panic suddenly set in. Chartres Cathedral, which was the heart of Rennes. The tumbrel. The stairs. Even in her confusion, her mind put the pieces together. She was being sent to the guillotine.

  Toni struggled on the musketeer’s shoulder. In her weakened condition, she did not have the strength to break free, succeeding only in knocking the musketeer off balance.

  “Stop squirming, whore.” He punched her in the head with his free hand. Her vision blurred.

  The musketeer finally stopped climbing, but still clutched Toni over his shoulder. She raised her head. Three meters in front of her stood the guillotine. The blade was being raised, its metal sheen darkened by blood. The other musketeer pushed Andre forward. He forced Andre to stand on the wooden platform at the base of the tilting board, and then tightened the restraining straps across his back and legs. Once secured, Scarface tilted the board into its horizontal position and lowered the upper portion of the lunette until it clamped down behind Andre’s neck, holding his head in place directly below the blade. Andre struggled, kicking frantically against his restraints, all to no avail. Scarface walked over to the lever that held in place the rope attached to the blade.

  In a last burst of defiance, Andre shouted, “Damn the revolution and the Committee of Pu-”

  The blade fell, striking Andre’s neck with a dull, meaty thud. Andre’s body convulsed several times before going limp. Scarface stepped over to the front of the guillotine, reached into the basket, and lifted up Andre’s severed head by the hair. He displayed it to the small crowd of onlookers, who cheered wildly. Scarface dropped the head back into the basket. A pair of men unstrapped Andre’s corpse and removed it, the sliced-open neck disgorging blood as they lifted the body off the tilting board. Scarface pulled on the rope, raising the blade back into position, and secured the rope with the lever. With the guillotine reset, he turned to the others.

  “Come on,” he yelled. “I don’t have all night.”

  The musketeer stepped forward. “Do the whore next so I don’t have to carry her anymore.”

  “Come on.”

  Lumbering up to the guillotine, the musketeer flopped Toni onto the tilting board. He started to wrap the restraints around her back, but Scarface stopped him. “Flip the whore onto her back.”

  “What?”

  Scarface shoved the musketeer aside and flipped Toni onto her back. Since she was practically unconscious, he did not bother strapping her down. After lowering the board into its horizontal position and securing the lunette in place over her throat, he leaned in close to Toni’s face.

  “I thought you’d like to watch. In a few seconds you’ll be uglier than me.”

  Toni barely heard him. Her entire concentration centered on the blade dangling precariously four meters above her head.

  Thankfully the enrages had not bothered to bound her hands. Toni reached up and grabbed the lunette, pulling at it with all her might. The wood bent, but did not break. She was still weak from the blows to her head.

  “Hurry up,” yelled Pierre. “She’s trying to break free.”

  “Let her try,” chuckled Scarface. “She can’t get loose.”

  Toni grabbed the lunette again, took a deep breath, and focused her energy. Summoning every ounce of energy she could muster, she yanked again. The lunette strained, creaked, and splintered into a thousand pieces.

  “Merde!” Scarface reached out and released the lever.

  Toni heard the blade sliding in its grooves a split second before she saw it plummeting toward her neck. She sat up. The blade whizzed by, missing her head by inches and slicing off long strands of her hair. For a moment she sat on the tilting board, dazed and weakened.

  The others stood around, immobilized by shock. Pierre was the first to regain his composure. “Shoot her!”

  The musketeer who had carried Toni up the platform went for his weapon, only then realizing he had left it with the paunchy man. Toni sprung off the table and raced toward him, slamming into his chest. The two tumbled off of the platform. Toni positioned herself so that she would land on the musketeer, using him to cushion her landing. When they hit the pavement, the musketeer’s head shattered like a ripe melon.

  Gunfire erupted around her. One shot ricocheted off the pavement beside her, and the other struck Toni in her lower back. Despite the pain, she jumped up and raced over to the trumbel. More gunfire sounded from behind her, but thankfully her attackers were inept at hitting a moving target. She jumped onto the back of the horse pulling the trumbel. The terrified animal bolted, heading straight for the crowd of onlookers. Most fled in fear of being trampled. A few braver souls attempted to stop her. By morphing into her vampire form, she was able to frighten them off. She crouched down against the horse, presenting as small a target as possible. The next volley of gunfire was erratic, missing her and the horse.

  Toni finally was able to steer the horse toward the main road leading out of Rennes. She looked behind her. No one followed. Thank Satan. She was in no condition to fight the humans right now. In a few minutes she would be clear of the city and heading for the nearby forest. Once there, she would stop, feed off of the horse, and find a safe place to sleep for the day while she regenerated and regained her strength.

  After that, she would leave France for good and find easier hunting grounds.

  * *
*

  JESSICA SET HERSELF up on the cement rim of the Capitol Reflecting Pool. She placed her Caesar salad wrap and Diet Coke on the rim, slipped on a pair of Rayban sunglasses, and flipped open her cellular phone. 11:48. That gave her twelve minutes before her meeting with Bill. She had no idea what Bill wanted, only that he claimed to have something she would be pleased with. Time would tell. Until then, she had enough time to eat lunch and make a call.

  Reaching into her jacket pocket, Jessica pulled out a piece of notepad paper on which she had jotted down the telephone number for the Boston Police Department. Last night she had spent four hours on the Internet combing through the archives of The Boston Globe and The Boston Herald looking for information on Drake Matthews. She had uncovered only a limited amount of information, but what she did unearth intrigued her. According to the newspapers, Drake and Alison had been the lead detectives tracking down a serial killer in Boston known as the Night Stalker. Details about the murders were minimal, other than that each of the victims had been drained of blood, even though no blood was found at the scenes of the crime. The police refused to provide more specifics than that so as not to compromise the investigation, or so they claimed. Inside sources admitted that the police had two theories. First, was that the victims had fallen afoul of a satanic cult that required human blood for some form of bizarre ritual. Second, was that the killer suffered from porphyria, a rare disease characterized by irregularities in the production of red blood cells which, though treatable through modern medicine, in ancient times had been cured by the consumption of human blood.

  Drake and Alison’s names exploded in the media after they tracked down the Night Stalker and killed him, in the process burning out Old South Church in Copley Square. For more than a week, Boston’s newspapers were filled with stories quoting officials from the Mayor’s office, the Boston Police, and state and local governments branding Drake as everything from a rogue cop to being “one donut shy of a dozen.” Possible charges being bantered about were arson, public endangerment, use of excessive force, even murder. The media vilified Drake with a greater fervor than they had shown toward the Night Stalker himself. Then suddenly, after eight days of being crucified journalistically, the press coverage of Drake Matthews or Alison Monroe died out. The only mention of them Jessica could find came from a blurb in The Boston Herald almost a week later, buried in two small paragraphs on page sixteen, noting that Drake Matthews had been fired from the Boston Police Department for the use of excessive force and that Alison Monroe had voluntarily resigned.

  The dearth of information only heightened her intrigue and left many questions unanswered. If the Boston newspapers did not want to ask them, then she certainly did.

  Jessica punched the phone number for the Boston Police Department into her cellular phone and pressed the send button. She wanted to get in contact with Michael Daugherty, the department’s press spokesman at the time of the incident. After three transfers and two minutes on hold, a man with a Boston accent picked up the line.

  “Michael Daugherty here. How can I help you?”

  Success, Jessica congratulated herself. “Good morning. I’m Jessica Reynolds with The Washington Standard. I was hoping for a few minutes of your time.”

  “Sure thing,” Daugherty said in a pleasantly professional manner. “What can I do for you?”

  “I wanted to ask you a few questions about Drake Matthews.”

  “Oh.” The pleasantry deflated from Daugherty’s voice.

  “Drake has been building quite a reputation for himself down here in Washington.”

  “I’m not surprised.”

  “I’m trying to develop a profile on him, but there’s not much information in the newspapers. I was hoping you could fill in the gaps.”

  “Not much more to tell than what’s already in the papers. Matthews is a whack job, pure and simple. It’s a shame, too. He was a good cop. Ten years on the force without a single blotch on his record.”

  “So what happened?”

  “He became obsessed with the Night Stalker case.” Daughtery’s voice took on a tinge of regret. “He started to take the case personally, especially after the murder of that family in the Back Bay. Four of them in one night. At that point, something in him snapped. The guy wound up adopting the family’s pet so it wouldn’t be sent to the pound. Said he wanted to save something from that slaughterhouse. We should have seen it coming and removed him from the case. But we didn’t. Things really started going downhill when Matthews began listening to that other whack job.”

  “Who was that?”

  “A professor at Salem State College. An expert on the Salem Witchcraft Trials. Also a self-proclaimed expert in the supernatural. Vampires. Demons. Satanic possessions.” Daugherty let out a sigh. “They’ll let anyone teach nowadays.”

  “And?”

  “He filled Matthews’ head with all sorts of occult shit. Convinced Matthews that the serial killer was really a vampire. Unfortunately, we didn’t know about this until after Matthews had tracked down the killer.”

  “I read about that in the local papers.”

  “Yeah? What didn’t make the papers was that when we found the killer’s remains, Matthews had staked the body to the alter and decapitated it.”

  “How were you able to determine Matthews did it?”

  “Because the crazy bastard admitted it. He even confessed to setting fire to the church to ensure that the killer stayed dead. Wanted to go public. You want to talk about a wicked public relations nightmare.”

  “If he admitted to the killing, why didn’t he go to jail?”

  Daugherty chuckled, more out of frustration than humor. “Believe me. It wasn’t for any lack of effort on our part. Both the Mayor and the police commissioner wanted to hang Matthews out to dry. Even Archbishop Defeo called for Matthews’ head after the destruction of Old South Church. Then word came down that Matthews was not to be prosecuted.”

  “Who gave the order?”

  “I have no idea. All I know is the mayor and the commissioner were not happy about it. Matthews walked and all charges against him were dropped as long as he agreed to leave Boston and never return.”

  “What’s the story with Alison Monroe?”

  “Alison was a rookie working with Matthews on the Night Stalker case. She would have made a good cop. Unfortunately, she let her loyalty to Matthews interfere with her better judgment. Whoever got Matthews off the hook did the same for Alison. She could have stayed with the force, but instead she resigned and followed him to Washington.” A momentary pause, then Daugherty said, “I hate to be rude, but I’m going to have to cut this short. I have a news conference in a few minutes.”

  “No problem. Just one more question. Do you know the name of the professor from Salem State College who Matthews talked to?”

  “Doctor Reese. I don’t remember the first name, though.”

  “That’s all right. You’ve been a great help. Thanks.”

  “Hey, no problem. Good luck with your research.” Then, as an afterthought. “You’re going to need it.”

  Jessica disconnected the call and stared across the Mall. She had found out Drake Matthews’ dirty little secret. He was nuts. Or at the very least, he had suffered a complete mental collapse. In either case, he was now running around loose here in Washington. Granted, a lot of people were running around the city who would be better off in a padded room. But she doubted many of them could claim that they had torched a church and destroyed a bridge. She would lay even odds that whoever had protected Matthews in Boston was doing so here. Jessica knew of only one way to find out. She had put off calling Matthews until she gathered enough information to make an interview worthwhile. Now seemed as good a time as any.

  A hand grabbed Jessica’s shoulder. She cried out and jumped, nearly sliding off the reflecting pool. Turning around, she looked up into the grinning face of Bill Carter.

  “You scared the shit out of me. You could have warned me you were sneaking u
p on me.”

  “I did. But you were so engrossed in whatever you’re doing you didn’t hear me.”

  Jessica repositioned herself on the cement rim, then motioned for Bill to join her. She took a bite of her Caesar wrap. “What’s so important that you needed to talk to me here rather than at the office?”

  “This.” Bill reached under his jacket and withdrew an envelope which he passed to Jessica.

  Placing her wrap back on the rim, Jessica broke the envelope’s seal and pulled out a single piece of legal-size paper folded twice widthwise. She unfolded the paper. A 3x5 photograph of a young boy had been stapled to the upper left corner. He looked about ten years old, but with no particular outstanding feature.

  “I’ll bite,” said Jessica. “Who is he?”

  “Jason Clark.”

  “And he’s of interest to me how?”

  Bill smiled broadly. “Jason Clark is the boy who was assaulted at Union Station. Besides Drake Matthews, he’s the only one to have seen the attacker up close.”

  “Are you serious?”

  “Yup. He’s a sixth grader at Beers Elementary School. He usually waits out in front of the school for his mother to pick him up. The kid’s mother works at a nearby Food Lion. They get out of school and work at the same time, so there’s a window of about ten to fifteen minutes when Jason is unsupervised. In case you wanted to talk with him.”

  Jessica read the sheet of paper, which included not only the information Bill had just related but also biographical data on Jason. After a few minutes she looked up at Bill. “Where did you get all this?”

  “From a friend who’s a private detective. I helped him buy his camera and set up his darkroom. He owed me a favor.”

  “He more than paid you back.”

  “Thanks. So what’s the game plan?”

  “Tomorrow’s Friday. We’ll meet at Beers Elementary School at two o’clock. With luck, I’ll be able to interview Jason before his mother shows up. Bring your zoom lens. I want to get a picture of Jason, but if we both try and talk with him, he’s liable to get spooked.”