“They are all locked up,” Force reminded the detective. She tapped the front passenger’s side dash a few times in frustration.
“What about Black Wolf?” Jeff offered from the back seat.
“Wolf isn’t one of Boss Wiley’s rivals,” Force replied. “And I think he’s retired. I’m sure if he was back and an ongoing threat, Wiley would have fingered him and given us his blessing. Plus, Wolf is a thief, a messy thief. He would have taken all the gold and diamonds and left lots of blood behind. No, this is not like him at all.”
“Maybe the Crystal Claw?” Costner suggested.
“Wasn’t she dead?” Jeff asked as something heavy smashed into the windshield.
The car careened out of control.
Jeff slammed back, forth, and into the door as the car crashed hard. A shock ran up his arm, stunning him. His head collided with… something. The world grew quiet for several long moments, save for a persistent ringing. His vision cleared quickly. The dull ringing faded as well. He slid over to the driver’s side door, opened it, and climbed out.
Force was already on the street.
Costner was still somewhere behind his blown airbag, hopefully alive.
“What was that?” Jeff forced out, steadying himself on shaky legs. He rubbed his shoulder until the throbbing ache went away. He looked around the street, then glanced back at the body now embedded in the Crown Victoria’s crushed windshield.
“Boss Wiley,” Force told him.
His mind reeling, Jeff leaned in to get a closer look. The large body was wedged half-way through the windshield, but the damage looked worse than what would happen due to a simple fall. The man had been beaten to a pulp. Jeff thought it could have been anybody, but then he caught a good look at his face. Boss Wiley, a face he had seen only just a few minutes before.
“Look out!” Force shouted just before glass exploded towards him from Detective Costner’s car.
Jeff fell back as the debris hit him, but he recovered quickly this time, looking up at a figure standing on the car’s crushed roof.
Shrouded in a black cloak, a tall woman stood on the crumpled roof of the wrecked car, gazing down at them with red eyes.
“You are weak,” the pale woman announced, then pointed at Boss Wiley’s dead body. “You should have thrown out that trash, instead you let it live. You’re done.”
“I don’t think so,” Force replied. Her gauntleted hands tightened into fists. “I don’t care who you think you are, but this is my city and I don’t allow animals to slaughter people at will.”
The woman standing on the car laughed. “What you ‘allow’ is irrelevant. I am Lavinia and I claim this city as my hunting ground.”
“Lavinia, is it? Never heard of you,” Force said with a smirk.
The woman cocked her head, her long black hair falling down over her shoulder. She leaped from the car onto the pavement in front of them both.
Jeff motioned to attack, but Force signaled for him to hold back. Apparently, she was going to hear this killer out. “Talkers aren’t fighters,” she’d once told him.
“I have slept for a few decades it seems. The city has changed, but it is still my territory,” the pale woman stated. “But now I have returned to the waking world and with my return comes the reclaiming of all that was once mine. You have kept this city well, but your reign is done. You may leave honorably. I will take your place.”
“Honorably? Take her place?” Jeff guffawed. “You’re a vicious killer.”
Lavinia paid him no attention, focusing entirely on Force.
“I have been watching you, sister, and I am impressed with your strength and your mission,” the woman explained. “I will promise to only kill those who are evil, those who are criminals, those who are the real animals. Accept my offer and depart.”
“No killer takes my place,” Force replied between clenched teeth. “Killing is not the answer.”
“Your flaw is that you let the evil doers live to continue their evil,” Lavinia insisted. “I will ensure their evil stops permanently. Your refusal to makes you no different from them, makes you equal to them, makes you one of them. Withdraw now or I will end you as I will end them.”
“No,” Force replied.
Lavinia shrugged and leaped.
Force met her, knocking Lavinia back against a nearby building. The concrete wall crumbled around the mysterious woman’s narrow frame.
Lavinia stood and returned the attack, throwing Force into a parked suburban across the street.
Jeff wondered how Lavinia could be so strong without being one of them. She certainly wasn’t a UQ. They would have sensed her.
Then Jeff remembered that the criminals had been drained of blood. Was Lavinia an actual vampire?
Force fired off her miniature gauntlet rockets. Pillars of fire exploded around the black-shrouded woman.
Seconds later, Lavinia walked out of the smoke, smiling her savage grin. Her white teeth were sharp and long.
Force motioned Jeff to join her in a combined attack.
He nodded, but as soon as he stepped forward, the streetscape disappeared.
Jeff found himself in a parking lot, a child in second grade, waiting for his mother to pick him up after school. He sat on the pavement alone for hours that day waiting for her, surrounded by broken toys. Jeff struggled to break free of the memory. What was going on? He wasn’t a child anymore. And where did those broken toys come from? There were no toys at his feet that day. But there Jeff was, scared and abandoned, tears running down his cheeks.
“Cadet!” he heard Force yelling at him from somewhere. “Snap out of it! Help me!”
The shock of her words tore Jeff out of the vision in time to see Lavinia begin ripping away Force’s body armor.
Jeff leaped, but Lavinia swatted him back, then followed with a series of hits. He landed hard on the street. The world around him grew dark and quiet.
Chapter 6
Jeff smelled smoke and dust. His ears rang. He tasted blood. His face throbbed in pain.
“Hey kid!” he heard someone calling through the fog. There was some scrabbling nearby, the sounds of bricks being tossed on the street. “You okay?”
Jeff mumbled something incoherent. He could feel someone turning him onto his back.
Then he opened his eyes. The blurriness cleared.
It was Costner. Blood stained his mustache, lips, and goatee. His hair was in disarray and red spots covered his white shirt.
“You’re a mess,” Jeff said to the detective.
“Thanks, Cadet,” the man said.
Jeff leaned to prop himself up, but when he pressed down with his palms, a sharp pain stung his chest.
“Be careful there,” Costner said, his hands out to stop him. “You were cratered right into the street, so just stay put. There’s nothing you can do now.”
“I’m fine,” Jeff insisted. With some effort, he pulled himself to his feet.
The ringing turned to sirens. Lights flashed around him.
An ambulance pulled up alongside a couple police cruisers. Even a fire truck had arrived.
His eyes roamed the scene. Costner’s busted cruiser was still there. Two more cars were upended. A dump truck was embedded in a wall and there was debris all over the street.
Jeff stepped past Detective Costner, ignoring the man’s attempt to hold him back.
Where were Force and the vampire woman they’d been fighting? What was her name? Right, Lavinia. Whatever her name was, it looked like the fight was over.
A Channel 37 news van pulled up. A woman reporter and her cameraman leaped out. Another pair joined them, two men from a rival station. All four ran up to him.
“What happened here, Cadet?” the woman asked, shoving a microphone in his face.
“Who were you and Force fighting?” the man asked. “What are you going to do now?”
Jeff stepped back, feeling dizzy all of a sudden. He remembered the accident, the vision, Force calling for hel
p, him attacking Lavinia, but not much else after that. What happened to Force? Where was she?
Jeff’s eyes looked past the reporters, finally settling on the fire truck ladder with men at the top cutting down the thing that dangled from a high streetlight.
Even from where he stood, Jeff recognized the short dark hair and lean muscular frame. That was Force. Jeff tried to make meaning from what he saw as the firemen carried his mentor’s limp body down the ladder.
Detective Costner shouted the reporters and cameramen away.
“Look, Cadet,” the man told him, voice suddenly shaking. “She’s going to have a hero’s service. That’s the least we can do for her.”
“She’s dead?” Jeff screamed. Even after all he’d seen, he couldn’t believe it. She was Force. She was bulletproof!
Detective Costner nodded slowly, putting his hands on Jeff’s shoulders. “I promise I will personally give you all her stuff after it’s collected and processed,” he told Jeff. “You deserve it. But I’m sorry kid, she’d gone.”
Force was dead.
His hero… his mentor.
And now he was the only one left, the city’s sole hero. Alone.
The idea hit Jeff hard enough to make him sit back down on the pavement. He couldn’t believe it.
Why hadn’t he been able to help her?
Chapter 7
Nothing was more real than standing over a dead body in the city morgue.
Jeff stood quietly with Detective Costner as the coroner droned on about the injuries that contributed to Force’s death: fractured skull, broken vertebra, exsanguination.
“What?” he asked, still dazed. It had only been a few hours. He’ll need nearly a full day to heal completely.
“She was drained of blood,” the older woman in the lab coat told him.
Force, the strongest, toughest human being Jeff had ever known had been beaten to death and had her blood sucked from her by Lavinia, an actual vampire.
Detective Costner turned away, wiping his eyes. This stunned Jeff. The man was weeping. Jeff knew Force and the detective had worked together for years and had been friends. Had there been more to their relationship than that? He wasn’t going to ask. What good would that do now?
Not wanting to stare at her bruised and battered face, Jeff glanced over at her bloody equipment laid out on the next table. State of the art gear had done nothing to stop that monster, that vampire. What did that mean for the city? And what did that mean for him?
“Come on,” Costner said, motioning to the door. His voice was deliberately hard. “We’re done here, Cadet. And we have to talk.”
Jeff took one last glance at Force’s sheet-covered body, then followed the detective out of the morgue.
They waded through a sea of reporters to the detective’s borrowed replacement car, which looked exactly like the one he had the night before.
Costner drove him back to the precinct where the big screen in the main hall played the news. Most of the policemen and detectives watched, shock etched on each and every one of their faces.
“Last night,” the anchorman said, “Dover City hero, Force, was cut down in the line of duty by a little-known assailant. Details are sketchy, but we do know that the alleged assailant is connected to a string of other gruesome killings in recent days.”
Behind the anchor, video of Force being cut down from the streetlight played on a loop.
Jeff couldn’t look away. After a few moments, he could feel Costner pulling on his arm.
“This way, kid, you don’t need to keep looking at that,” he said.
The anchorman’s voice continued. “Looking forward, Force’s sidekick, Cadet Trainee Alpha, is now the city’s sole hero. He’s expected to participate in the stepping up ceremony in front of city hall at 1 pm this afternoon. Our cameras will be there to bring it to you live.”
Several of the cops turned to look at him.
Stepping up? Already?
“I said this way,” Costner said in a harder tone that pulled Jeff out of his trance.
Nodding numbly, he followed the detective to his office.
Costner sat down heavily at his desk and pulled out a flask. He offered it to Jeff first, then greedily gulped it down. Finished for the moment, he set the flask on his desk, wiped his mouth below his bruised nose, and gazed at Jeff, who had slumped in the chair across from him.
“Look, Cadet, you know how this goes,” he began. “When a hero dies, her sidekick rises to take her place. You’re the city’s hero now, whether you like it or not. You’re going to have to take this on full time. The city needs you. We all need a hero. You know that. It’s what Erica would have wanted.”
That brought Jeff to attention. He wasn’t used to hearing Force’s real name, wasn’t used to thinking of her as Erica McCreary. He shook his head. It was too soon. He wasn’t-
“Look, Detective Costner, Tom,” he began, noting that the detective did not like being called by his first name. “I’m not ready for that. I haven’t even finished my training. Let alone finished high school.” Jeff was only sixteen, and the detective knew that. He had classes and tests and girls to think about, not taking over as the hero for the entire city. “What about that vampire, Lavinia?” he added, trying to change the subject. “She said she was taking over, but she’s a monster. A real-life vampire. Isn’t dealing with her more important for everyone than elevating me to become Force? You know I can’t just take her place like that.”
Pain stretched across Detective Costner’s face as clear as day. Neither of them thought he could replace Erica and neither of them had to say it.
“How do we even stop her?” he wondered.
“Wooden stake?” Costner offered.
“Crosses, silver,” Jeff replied, trying to think of everything he knew about vampires from TV and the movies. “Silver bullets?”
“I think those are just for werewolves,” Costner replied. “Garlic, sunlight maybe.”
“But is any of that real?” Jeff asked. “What is a real vampire vulnerable to?” Certainly not a super strong, experienced, and powerful hero.
Costner shrugged, took another gulp from his flask.
The door opened behind him and Lieutenant Oort stepped in. “Cadet Trainee Alpha?”
Jeff glanced over at the lieutenant. “Yes.”
“The mayor called. She’s ready for you at the stepping up ceremony,” the curly haired man told him. “It’s being set up at City Hall for an hour from now. The car’s ready to take you over.”
“Are you kidding me?” Jeff turned to Costner. “I mean, she just-”
Costner scowled at him. “The city needs someone to be Force,” he said, his voice almost cracking. “They need you. We need you. This can’t wait. You know why. You have to go. For her.”
Jeff stood up and, even though he knew in his heart he wasn’t ready, he followed Lieutenant Oort and Detective Costner out the door anyway.
Chapter 8
Hundreds of people gathered on the steps of City Hall to witness the stepping up ceremony. Considering how sudden arrangements needed to be made and the solemn nature of the circumstances surrounding the event, the crowd was uncharacteristically quiet.
It was worse than that, Jeff thought from his position between Detective Costner and Police Commissioner Loch. There was something to the silence. Their eyes watched him. They examined him and, as he looked out over the mass of people, Jeff guessed what they were collectively thinking.
He was not ready. Not yet. Within minutes, Jeff Beal will shed the name Cadet Trainee Alpha, the title given to the hero in training, and he will officially be named Force, the city’s chief protector.
Children, fathers, mothers, business women, cops, and firefighters all huddled at the base of the steps. Many were in tears. Some gazed at him with hope. Others glared in accusation. None of it approached the turmoil he felt inside, however. He couldn’t save her. How was he good enough to replace her?
Jeff pushed these though
ts to the back of his mind. He had to be in the present. He had to pay attention to what the Police Chief and the Mayor had to say about his dead mentor.
“Erica McCreary,” Mayor Joanne Mike said as she repeatedly dabbed at her eyes, “was our Force for almost fifteen years. Our city’s Force for justice, of pride, of commitment. She was a woman of incredible power, ability, and compassion who we all looked up to. A woman who sacrificed her life for the city she loved, that we all love. She worked with the police and myself and all of our citizens in order to create and maintain a community we all could believe in.”
Her eulogy blurred with Police Commissioner Loch’s speech.
“She meant everything to us,” the bearded man added, “for all intents and purposes, Force is this city, representing all that is good and meaningful and enduring about what all of us stand for.”
For an instant, an ominous shade crossed over the faces of the crowd.
Jeff tensed, his heart pounding. Was that the vampire? Was Lavinia here now? No, he decided, it couldn’t be.
He blinked, but when he opened his eyes, he saw her standing among the people. He blinked again and she was in another part of the crowd. Then another. Did vampires have the ability to teleport?
Commissioner Loch’s words cut through these questions, jolting back to reality.
“But now is the time to say goodbye to Erica and welcome our new Force. Like her and those who came before her, Cadet Trainee Alpha will rise to the mantle. Join me in welcoming our city’s new Force.”
Commissioner Loch turned to Jeff and extended a hand, inviting him to approach the podium.
A smattering of quiet clapping washed over the crowd. Jeff stared at them for a breath, then at the councilmen, police, and firefighters. The vampire had disappeared altogether.
Detective Costner nudged him forward.
Jeff walked to the podium and shook the commissioner’s hand. He’d chosen to be Cadet Trainee Alpha, knowing one day he would be Force. Whether he felt ready or not, that day was today.
Superheroes Kill Vampires Page 2
