Angel of Vengeance

AVAILABLE NOW FROM TITAN BOOKS:

THE SUPERNATURAL SERIES:

HEART OF THE DRAGON Keith R.A. DeCandido

THE UNHOLY CAUSE Joe Schreiber

WAR OF THE SONS Rebecca Dessertine & David Reed

THE FURTHER ADVENTURES OF SHERLOCK HOLMES SERIES:

THE VEILED DETECTIVE David Stuart Davies

THE WAR OF THE WORLDS

Manly Wade Wellman & Wade Wellman

THE ECTOPLASMIC MAN Daniel Stashower

THE SCROLL OF THE DEAD David Stuart Davies

THE MAN FROM HELL Barrie Roberts

THE STALWART COMPANIONS H. Paul Jeffers

THE SEVENTH BULLET Daniel D. Victor

SÉANCE FOR A VAMPIRE Fred Saberhagen

DR JEKYLL AND MR HOLMES Loren D. Estleman

THE WHITECHAPEL HORRORS Edward B. Hanna

THE GIANT RAT OF SUMATRA Richard L. Boyer

THE ANGEL OF THE OPERA Sam Siciliano

THE RUNESCAPE SERIES:

BETRAYAL AT FALADOR T.S. Church

RETURN TO CANIFIS T.S. Church

ANGEL

OF

VENGEANCE

TREVOR O. MUNSON

TITAN BOOKS

ANGEL OF VENGEANCE

ISBN: 9780857685377

Published by

Titan Books

A division of Titan Publishing Group Ltd.

144 Southwark St.

London SE1 0UP

First edition: February 2011

10 987654321

Copyright © 2010 Trevor Munson

Cover images © Shutterstock.

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A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

Printed and bound in the United States of America.

To my parents, Tom and Sharon, whose love and encouragement has always served as the light that allowed me to chase my dreams to whatever dark places they might lead.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

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

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

CHAPTER 22

CHAPTER 23

CHAPTER 24

CHAPTER 25

CHAPTER 26

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

PROLOGUE

B
lack doctor’s satchel clutched tight, I stop beneath the naked bulb that burns next to a chipped paint door marked 3B. It’s late for a house call, but then I’m no doctor.

Knock-knock.
I wait.

3B swings open and a scrawny white guy blinks out at me. With his oversized Adam’s apple, thinning blond hair, and wire-framed glasses, he looks like a mild-mannered accountant. He smiles at me friendly-like. It’s a sweet smile. A smile you can trust. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s that looks can be deceiving. I should know.

“Michael Ensinger?” I ask, and watch as a look of suspicion creeps across his bland features.

“Who’s askin’?”

“My friend here,” I say, showing him the pearl-handled .38 revolver I’ve taken from the satchel.

“Woah, hey. Hey,” Michael says. I enjoy seeing the sullen look depart as he puts his soft, never-seen-a-hard-day’s-work-in-his-whole-life hands up in front of him like a bank teller in an old western. “What is this? What’s goin’ on?”

“We need to talk.”

“’Kay. S’talk.”

“Not here. Inside. Can I come in?”

Scared, he nods nervous consent.

“No. You have to say it. Can I come in?”

With only eyes for my gun, he says, “Yeah, yeah. Come in.”

Green light. I back him inside at gunpoint. I close the door behind me, spin the bolt lock, look around. The place is run down, but neatly kept, everything in its place.

Behind him on the tube, a bound-and-gagged naked blonde is being dragged across a room by her hair by a guy in a black hood. Looks like I interrupted Mikey in the middle of a little sadistic jack-off session.

“Nice show. Find it on PBS?”

“Screw you, man. What d’you want with me?”

My lack of response makes him more nervous and he swallows. I watch that huge Adam’s apple bob up and down inside his Ichabod Crane-neck. Best not stare too long.

“A-are you okay?” He has seen something he doesn’t like in my dark crystal-ball eyes. Something that doesn’t bode well for a long, healthy future.

“I’m fine. Where’s your bathroom?”

He gestures vaguely. “D-down the hall.”

“Let’s go.”

“What? Why? I mean, I thought you just wanted to talk.”

“I do. In the bathroom.”

Ensinger looks like he wants to argue the point, so I cock the gun. It dummies him up nice and I follow him down the short hall and into the ugly tile bathroom. I pull the door shut behind us and inspect the facilities. The tub is filthy. It will have to be cleaned.

Keeping the gun on him, I root under the bathroom sink and come up with a scrub brush and a can of Comet. I hold them out.

“Clean the tub. It’s disgusting.”

He looks at me like I must be joking, gives me a smart-ass smile. “So what, you go around breaking into places and force people to clean?”

I smack the grin right off his face. His glasses go flying. He crumples by the tub. It’s all the answer he gets. “Get to it.”

Cowering, he fumbles for his glasses, puts them back on. Then, with jittering hands, he runs the hot water, sprinkles the Comet and begins to scrub like a good boy.

Behind him I carefully remove my tailored suit jacket and roll up my sleeves. Noticing my increasing state of undress from the corner of his eye, Ensinger stops and looks at me nervously. I point to the tub. “Focus.” He goes back to it. The rhythmic scrape of the brush against the porcelain sounds like a train locomotive picking up speed for a long uphill haul. Seems appropriate.

“What’s going on? I don’t know what’s going on,” he says, sounding like a scared nine year-old boy.

“What’s going on—” I explain as I remove my fedora and set it beside the sink where it will be safe and out of the way, “is I’ve come to see you on behalf of someone you know real well.”

“Who?”

“Elizabeth Lowery.”

His eyes go wide at the mention of the name. The brush stops. He turns and looks at me. “N-no. I didn’t—That wasn’t me. The—the cops, they had the wrong guy. That’s why they let me go. They had the wrong guy.”

“Uh-uh. They had the right guy. They only let you go because Elizabeth was too scared of you to testify. Isn’t that right?”

“No.”

“Way I heard it, when you were done with her, the docs had to sew up parts that shouldn’t have to be sewn up.”

“No. You got it wrong. I swear to God you got it wrong.”

“You’re not working,” I say. I set the gun down—I don’t really need it, it’s more for effect than anything else—and light a smoke.

Nearly done now, he goes back to it, scrubbing away as he tries to work it all out.

“So what, she—she hired you to come here?”

“No. I’ve never met her. This was my idea. Call it a hobby,” I say, doing my best impression of a smokestack.

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done it. It was wrong and—and I’m sorry,” he mewls.

“It’s okay. I understand.”

“Y-you do?”

“Sure. You like to hurt girls. I used to know someone like you. He liked to hurt women too. Only difference was he was my old man and the woman he liked to hurt was my mother. He beat her to death and went to jail while I was still too young to stop him... ” I shake my head, blow smoke. “Regret like that, it stays with ya.”

The scrubbing stops again. Beside the tub, Ensinger turns and looks at me as I loosen the knot in my tie, take it off. “Of course, now, my mom, she chose him. Elizabeth Lowery didn’t even get that chance, did she? She never got to make the decision one way or the other because she didn’t know you existed. And if she had, she wouldn’t have given you the time of day, would she, Mikey? That’s what really gets you, isn’t it? That’s why you pick the ones you pick.”

Ensinger just stares at me, the truth of things frozen on his face.

“Rinse it,” I say.

I extinguish the butt in the drip from the sink faucet and drop it into a ziplock bag I keep among the other items—glass vials, funnel, ball-gag, hacksaw—in the satchel.

Hands trembling, Ensinger spins the knobs and turns the showerhead on, rinsing the frothy gray bubbles down the drain. Finished, he sits with his back against the tub and looks up at me.

“Nice job.” I pick up the gun and gesture with it. “Get in.”

“Please—please don’t hurt me.”

“I don’t like to repeat myself. It makes me sore. Real sore, if you want to know the truth. Get in the tub.”

He sees in my eyes that there’s no room for argument. He gets up and gets in.

“Lock the drain.”

With a sob, he pulls the metal drain tab up, and looks up at me with the same feverish, glassy-eyed stare I imagine a cow must give the butcher just before the stropped blade is dragged across its neck.

“I’ll never do it again. I swear to God I’ll never do it again.”

I let go now. I’m over the brink. The change has begun and just as with the moment of release during orgasm, Moses himself couldn’t hold it back. The pain of transformation is as awful as it is sweet. Bone is displaced as my brow wrenches forward. My face elongates. My fangs grow. My jaw comes unhinged. My eyes grow black as they fill with blood.

Seeing it happen, the look in Michael’s eyes tells me he’s just now realizing how much more there was to learn about the reality he thought he knew. I don’t feel the least bit bad for him. Predators like him are a waste of skin in my book, which is why I only hunt predators like him. No women. No children. No innocents. Those are the rules. I’m no hero, but the way I figure it, if I’ve got to kill people—and I do—might as well be ones who deserve killin’. It’s how I live with myself, so to speak. It’s how I deal with what I’ve become.

“I know you won’t,” I say.

1

N
ightfall comes with an ache. I feel the sinking sun deep in my bones the way old people sense a coming storm. My thirst awakens like the first signs of narcotic withdrawal. Parched with a sandy desert thirst, I rise.

I push open the lid of the industrial-size deep freeze that serves as my coffin. The freezer preserves me; slows the cancerous rot that gnaws me from the inside out during my waking hours. Though vastly slower than normal decomposition, the ever-constant stink of decay is an ugly truth about being undead. One of those little tidbits no one tells you about before you become a vampire.

Frostbitten air trails me like a cape as I step naked into the dark confines of my North Hollywood digs. The place isn’t much to look at, just a shabby two-bit office with a kitchenette and half-bath, but it’s home.