B00724AICC EBOK (2 page)

Numerous silhouettes of the undead concealed themselves into the obscurity of the night, and the steamy atmosphere didn’t oppress them. They waited with the patience of a three thousand-year-old Great Basin bristlecone pine tree. They were ever vigilant for their opportunity to strike. Their hungry eyes glowed red when they permitted them to do so. Over eight million souls fed energy and personality into the United States largest metropolis. An almost full moon hung over the city, indifferent in its beauty that usually went unnoticed.

Some New Yorkers slept with shoguns loaded with shells that contained oak dust to kill the monsters, some went off accidentally during the long night and some didn’t. Kids scared the hell out of their parents and thought it was hilarious. Some survived the encounters and some didn’t. It was an awful thing to live with, having accidentally killed their children out of fear. Some lived on past the horrible incidents and some didn’t.

A single rumble of thunder and rod of lightening teased of a rain that would perhaps cool the area, but it produced nothing significant. It was a lot like the shallow promises from the authorities. It sounded good but the end result was nothing to talk about. Then a misty drizzle that made the area even more sinister looking, as if every single shadow contained a monster, and some did. The fog contained shades of gray that was like a mirage in the desert.

The night was alive with worried minds and frightened faces.

An aberration of a vampire bat flew over the neo-gothic Brooklyn Bridge spanning the East River; he was looking down upon the traffic, and searching for his opportunity to feed. The bat was three times larger than the normal Desmodus rotundus, with different abilities as well, and with the most important being its ability to transform into the so-called undead. It flew through one of the pointed arches thoroughly enjoying the sights below. Flying through the sunless sky was pure pleasure. The smell of all those human blood bags down there was an exciting event. The heavy traffic was like snakes slithering to their next destination. After several more hours of exploring the bat flew over the Queensboro Bridge, and the United Nations Headquarters.

The bat’s wings cut through the warm air as it searched for its prey, and it could detect human blood from a thousand feet up. Lance preferred people that had consumed rare sirloin steaks because he liked the taste of iron rich blood, and could sense what he wanted from several hundred feet away. Obese people were some of his favourites and vegetarians were left alone to perish of their own natural causes. Being a vampire his echolocation combined with supernatural vision helped him to locate preferable targets, and his echolocation was not reduced as that of a normal vampire bat, but actually almost ninety times more potent.

New York City was a spectacular place at night as the city could be mistaken for no other. The skyscrapers impressed upon the humans their smallness, and the bitters made them aware of their vulnerability and mortality. The night was now the enemy to most people, with parking lots lit so brightly that some people could barely stand it. The supernatural advantage of the vampires was as an adult fighting a toddler, so for most humans no chance to prevail. Wooden tipped bullets killed a few, but hesitation to pull the trigger and mind control was responsible for many more human deaths at the hands of the vamps. The creatures were simply too damn fast and powerful.

Circling the city made the vampire feel crazed with bloodlust, especially since Lance had purposely gone almost a week without partaking to get to that frenzied state. He simply loved the enthusiasm of his inner monster. The beast enjoyed the uneasiness and anticipation of what was to come, and would risk death to taste salty human flesh and blood. After the vampire fed, it would sleep with the contentment of flowers in the sun; otherwise it was an uneasy slumber. The bat had observed a red transport truck that was pulled by a Kenworth tractor with a full load of ice cream in its refrigerated trailer as it pulled off the highway to take on fuel. The bat flew in and hung upside down upon the power line that led into the station and watched with the eagerness of a starving lion. The driver’s scent was maddening to the vampire, even from inside the cab. A red sheriff in a white Chevy Malibu had been detected as he passed on the highway and so the attack was temporarily postponed. Those sheriffs could detect a scream a hell of a long distance away.

Back in the truck and back on the highway the vampire continued to pursue from the air. But on First Avenue the bat morphed and attacked the speeding rig, smashing feet-first through the driver’s side window and feeding on Marty the driver, with only the briefest scream having been emitted. Poor Marty was drained and killed in seconds, and his wife would regret the fight they had that morning for the rest of her life. The heavy truck barrelled out of control into the candy apple red Dodge minivan, killing the family of five instantly, including twin seven-year-old boys. Gravity, velocity and the weight of the large transport had made the carnage inevitable. It was a horrible scene for all those that would be forced to view it.

Being a fairly new vamp, nineteen-year-old Lance Walker stopped to lap up some of the blood that was dripping down from the van’s door before fleeing the scene. His long blond hair made him look as though he should have belonged to a heavy metal band. Covered in skull tattoos, he had been a bad boy prior to being turned, killing dogs and cats and anything else he could get his nasty hands on, but now was a genuine nightmare. It had been his fifth kill in a month. Lance blurred away into the darkness that he was so comfortable with and vanished.

Many calls went into the station of the local red sheriff, a law enforcement office in the Bronx which was set up to deal with criminal bloodsuckers, both trained and approved by Dracula himself. Few had seen the king in over two decades and there were plenty of new vampires that even doubted his existence. Because of the limited number of vampire sheriffs the situation had deteriorated dramatically as humans were being killed by vamps every single day. Wooden-tipped bullets were selling like popcorn at the movies.

Alexander Coleman entered his small white office and saw that his dell laptop computer was lit up with incoming calls. He had thick black hair and a perfect muscular body. A photo of Bruce Lee hung above his desk. His female German shepherd Tessy, also a vampire, blurred into the space so rapidly that she knocked The New York Times newspaper onto the floor having pushed the air current to such a degree. She kicked at the dog dish under the sport section and accidentally drove it into the wall; Alexander hadn’t been paying attention and so didn’t have the opportunity to intercept the bowl.

“
Tessy, a little slower please.” He was a big man with such a handsome face that he almost always made the ladies stare, and was dressed in an ink black suit with matching black tie, with a glowing red sheriff’s badge attached above his heart. The badge was electronic, and pressing it would display to authorities all pertinent information about him, including the impressive fact that he had been trained by the master himself. It was also a video recorder.

All the messages originating from the computer appeared to be from First Avenue, as did several calls from the police. It was clear that someone had been killed. Evil vampires needed to be stopped and turned to dust, but there was only so much that a single sheriff could accomplish. As of late it was difficult to get a day off from the nightly carnage. Vampires had been getting out of hand for several years, and still there was no sign of Dracula. It was as if the Master had abandoned his children.

The dog, as gorgeous as she was intimidating, barked a high-piercing bark. It was her FEED ME bark. She was a mix of two breeds, German shepherd and Siberian husky; she took her beautiful coloration from both, though she looked to have more shepherd in her and appeared fierce. Tessy had been turned by the master, and in fact no other vampire seemed capable of turning animals, although he claimed it to be possible for all biters to accomplish. That was one of a myriad of secrets that Dracula wouldn’t reveal.

“
All right, I’ll give you some food and then we gotta go. Duty calls.”

Alexander pulled the bowl out of the wall and placed it on the cupboard by the sink. He opened the fridge and removed two bags of O positive blood and poured one into the silver dog dish and he drank the other. It was so refreshing that it was like a human dying of thirst finding a large bottle of Aquafina water in the Mojave Desert. There was nothing like the taste of blood to a vampire.

Tessy stopped and stared out into the night, with her ears obviously listening to something. The sheriff placed one hand on his gun and the other onto his ancient samurai sword. He looked at the dog’s face and at the movement of her ears and knew something was up. The door was kicked in and off its hinges. A crazed biter by the name of Frank Cole was celebrating his two hundredth birthday, and since he tortured the sheriff’s location out of an off-duty police officer, he had decided to celebrate it by eliminating one of Dracula’s personal assistants. And Alexander was one of six legendary sheriffs at that.

Frank drove the sheriff across the room with a kick, and was on the sheriff instantly, attacking with a piece of sharpened maple, and then he was on the sheriff. But Alexander held both wrists stopping him from plunging the wood into his heart, when a vicious growl made him turn his head. Frank was appalled and immediately frightened as the dog showed her vampire teeth. He had heard of vampire dogs but had never actually seen one. Up until this time he thought the dogs were probably mythical beings, but seeing one in the flesh was something else. The assailant was just about to flee and had started to do so when Tessy blurred and grabbed Frank by the throat, biting through his carotid artery, the dog wouldn’t stop until his head came off. His evilness turned to dust in her mouth and Tessy made faces as she spit out the unwanted grit. Frank’s skeletal remains hit the polished floor.

“
Tessy, good girl.”

Alexander blurred onto the crime scene so fast that it made the officer near the minivan go for his gun until he noticed the badge. Some of the police were taking care of traffic as two detectives in suits also arrived on the scene. Officer Miller recognised Alexander immediately and so it wasn’t necessary to verify that he was indeed a red sheriff. They had had one episode of a phony sheriff that had caused several officers to lose their lives.

“
Miller, how long ago?” Alexander told Tessy to sit and she did so. The dog also sniffed the air as she waited.

“
Less than an hour,” said Miller. “Those bastards give me the creeps. What are my chances of actually killing one with one of these wooden tipped bullets? I feel like a mouse waiting for a hawk to show up.”

Alexander snapped his fingers and pointed to the area around the minivan where he could see tracks in the blood. “Tessy go!” The German shepherd immediately started to sniff the area. “Oh, those bullets will kill a vamp, problem is that we’re almost as fast as a bullet, so if you hesitate you die. And it has to be a shot to the heart.”

Another officer entered the scene with attitude, below average in height with a husky build and salt and pepper hair. Detective Braden Carter looked at Alexander with disgust. Braden hated all vampires. “Miller, what the hell is THAT doing here?”

“
He’s sanctioned by the government and you know it. You’d be happy to have him here if a bad one showed up right now.”

Carter placed himself directly in front of the sheriff and looked up at him. “Do you know how easy it would be for me to kill you?”

“
You couldn’t kill your grandmother little man.”

The dog growled and briefly showed her fangs but then went right back to sniffing. The shepherd sensed the detective’s animosity but she knew his fear would prevent him from acting on it. She barked four high-pitched barks, indicating that she had the scent and was ready to pursue. The dog blurred fifty feet across the street and waited for her master to follow in pursuit; she could sense the criminal getting further away from the crime scene.

“
Vampire, what will you do if you catch the son-of-a-bitch?” Having lost too many family members to them including his lovely wife Rebecca, Carter wasn’t likely to ever lose his hatred of vampires.

“
He’ll be killed on sight, and my badge will record and upload it to the server. His image will be processed and run against other unsolved crimes so that they can be closed.”

Carter hesitated but decided to ask. “Can you take me with you so that I can observe the kill? It’s a government sanctioned request that I received some time ago. The more we observe firsthand the more we can learn.”

The sheriff looked at the detective and smiled. “I can but it’s a scary run for a human, and I can’t promise that you’ll be safe.”

“
Let’s roll!” Carter pretended that he wasn’t frightened of what was to come, but even the dog could detect his apprehension from across the street. Tessy squatted and urinated to show her disdain, but nobody noticed except for the sheriff.

Alexander placed both his hands under the detective’s armpits, lifted him up as a father would his child and blurred with him into the night. The speed and the proximity of seemingly imminent collisions with buildings and cars that never occurred was enough to take the detective’s breath away. They abruptly halted in areas that Lance Walker had stopped to do reconnaissance for his future crimes, where he left a larger accumulation of his stink behind, especially in one area where Carter had vomited the remnants of his pizza with the works that he had for dinner into a green garbage can. Unless the detective was driving a vehicle he was prone to car sickness, and all those rapid movements had been too much for him.