Authors: James R. Tuck

Tags: #Fantasy, #Vampires

Blood and Bullets (8 page)

BOOK: Blood and Bullets

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“You couldn't have just picked a burger joint?”

I picked up my sweet tea and took a sip of it. Larson was being pretty damn annoying. “Look, slick. This is good food. Open your horizons a little. Plus, it's perfect for the night we have ahead of us. I doubt everything is going to go smoothly. This will give you plenty of protein in a package that won't sit heavy in your stomach.” My chopsticks tapped the crucifix of the rosary hanging from the rearview mirror, making it sway to and fro. “Besides, it's Friday, which means no meat for us Catholics.” I pointed at his box with the chopsticks in my hand. “So shut the hell up and give it a try.”

Larson's mouth pulled tight into a line as he slid the lid off his box. He did what I had and opened the pack of soy sauce, emptying it into the space provided. He surprised me by using the chopsticks properly. Avoiding the Southern Deacon Roll, instead, he chose a piece of eel. Gingerly, he dipped it into the soy sauce like I did and then put it in his mouth. Slowly his jaw worked as he chewed it.

It took only a second or two for the surprise to show on his face as the flavor hit him. He swallowed and picked up another piece, this time the veggie tempura roll. He ate that piece without hesitation. “This is actually good.”

“Told you.”

We ate in silence after that. When I was done, I put the empty box on the back seat and turned to look at Larson. My back was against the Comet's door and I had my sweet tea. He was about halfway done with his meal when I broke the silence.

“Tell me why you are hunting vampires.”

The chopsticks in his hand closed over a piece of the Southern Deacon Roll. He held it wavering over the soy sauce. It trembled on the end of two pieces of wood until he decided against dipping it. He popped it in his mouth and chewed thoughtfully. Taking a drink from his tea made his Adam's apple bob up and down. Blue eyes cut over to me and then back down to the box on his lap.

“I just think they are evil and somebody has to.”

He didn't even
sound
convincing.

Taking my own sip of tea, I felt the sugar rush into my system. It was sweet enough to be syrup. My blood pressure rose slightly and I felt it tight in my temples. The Styrofoam cup squeaked when I lowered it.

“Bullshit,” I said. “There are people who hunt them. People like me, not people like you.” Again, those blue eyes cut over at the emphasis I made. “Something made you decide to get involved, even though you have no training to help you survive.”

His eyes were back to staring at the box of food in his lap. “When I was in school I did a paper on folklore in ancient cultures, specifically on burial superstitions. My research led me to book called the
Morbius Manifesto.
”

I had heard of this book. It was a subsection of the
Darkhold,
a book so full of evil and satanic knowledge that no one could pinpoint which occultist in the dark ages had spawned it. The
Darkhold
was broken up into the subsections and kept separated by the Vatican so that its evil power couldn't be fully accessed.

I had asked Father Mulcahy why the Church didn't just burn them, and he explained that some occult books actually have demons trapped in their pages, bound into the physical copy of the book and kept imprisoned for the safety of humankind. If they were burned, then the demons would be released to wreak havoc. The Vatican tried to keep them all secured, but being evil, demon-possessed books, the slippery bastards were always getting away.

My hand came up to pause Larson. “Wait, where did you read the
Morbius Manifesto
?”

Larson got that look that scholars get when dealing with the uneducated. You know that look, like the answer is so obvious they cannot even believe they are having a conversation with you. It's the same look teenagers perfect when dealing with anyone over the age of twenty-two.

“Online.” The unspoken “duh” hung in the air.

See what I mean?

“So from that you learned vampires were real?”

His head bobbed up, then down, and he continued eating. “I didn't believe it, of course. But the
Morbius Manifesto
did outline the characteristics of vampires, what one would look forward to if they were working with a vampire, and how to kill them if they got out of control.”

So that explained the crosses and the wooden stakes earlier. The
Morbius Manifesto
would have been written long before semiautomatics and silver ammo. But reading some old occult handbook wouldn't convince anyone vampires were
real
. Taking another sip of my sweet tea, I gestured at him with the cup.

“Tell me how you knew they really existed. You obviously had never met one until Varney's, and then you didn't know what she was.” Larson's ears burned bright red at this. “So what convinced you?”

“There was a newscast one night about an unsolved multiple homicide in South Georgia. Four people all died from having their throats âcut.'” Larson made air quotes with his fingers here. “They showed crime scene footage, and the four people were just slaughtered. I don't even know how they showed the footage they did, except that there was so much blood it looked like an art exhibit. It didn't even look real.”

His eyes glazed over as his mind took him back to that image he saw. I shifted and shook the ice in my cup. It was enough to bring his attention back to me. Motioning with the cup, I encouraged him to continue.

“In the midst of this footage I noticed that the bodies were surrounded by huge piles of dust, and the biggest pile had a wooden two-by-four that had been sharpened and driven into the floor.” His eyes were wide as he looked at me. “In that moment, everything clicked, and I
knew
that book was true and vampires did exist.”

“So
that's
when you decided to strap up some stakes and hunt the damned things?” Larson flinched at the heat in my voice. I didn't give him time to respond. “I can't tell you how incredibly stupid that was.” My hand swung his way. I wasn't going to hit him, I swear I wasn't, but he flinched again. My finger jabbed into his face, emphasizing my words. “You are damn lucky some bloodsucker decided to use you to bait a trap for me instead of draining your blood
after
you led them to every person you ever loved so they could slaughter them in front of you.” The bag rustled in protest as I started gathering the trash from our dinner and shoving it inside.

Pale hands came up between me and Larson as if he were trying to shield himself from my anger. “I did more research before I went hunting.”

The paper bag sailed over the back seat, narrowly missing his head in my anger. Now it wasn't just the sweet tea that had my blood pressure up. My voice was hard and cold even in my own ears.

“Research? You did some fucking research? You know that scene you saw on the news? The one that gave you your ârevelation' about vampires?” It was my turn to air quote. Larson shrank back against the door from my bunny-eared fingers. “Let me tell you something that the news left out, slick. I hunted that kiss of vampires for three damn nights. They killed that family slowly. The entire time they drank from one of the family, they made the others watch them do it. Every member of that family was tortured and raped because vampires like the spice of fear in their food. Once I got in to kill them, they had already drank them dead.”

My hand grabbed the edge of my shirt and pulled it up to my chest. On the right side of my stomach, just past the words tattooed there, was a fist-sized knot of scar tissue. It sat fat and slick in my skin. Grabbing his arm, I pushed his hand against it. I couldn't feel anything on the actual scar tissue, but his fingertips were cold and moist on the skin around it. The bones in his hand moved as I ground his palm into the scar tissue so he could feel its rough texture and hardness. His eyes darted from his hand to my face and back again. Sweat beaded along his eyebrows and upper lip.

“Before I could kill them all, one of those bastards sunk their fangs into my side and tore this chunk out. I almost died dusting those satanic cocksuckers, and NONE of the family survived.” In disgust, I shoved his hand away from my skin and turned to the steering wheel. “That's
my
fucking research.” Flicking the key brought the engine roaring to life. I punched the MP3 player to blast music into the car so I wouldn't have to hear him apologize. Dropping into gear, I launched the Comet out into the night like its namesake.

Turning the stereo down, I spoke to Larson. I had calmed down by the time we got close to the club, but my voice was still harsh. My throat was still tight from the rage I had swallowed. I wanted him to understand the ground rules for the night so he didn't try to bolt.

“All right, you stick with me. Don't get separated and don't speak. I will do the talking and you will keep quiet. If you have any questions, you keep them to yourself until we get back to the car. If it all goes to shit, get to the car. Clear?”

I saw him nod out of the corner of my eye as I was pulling into the parking lot for Helletog. It was a massive building made up of a series of cubes stacked one on another. Neon screamed the name of the club out into the night and traced along the top of the roof. Leave it to a vampire to name his nightclub a Chaldean word for demonspeak. It squatted on the parking lot like a gargoyle.

We drove slowly through the rows of cars until I found a spot where I could point the nose of the Comet toward the exit. The lot took up about half a square mile and was surrounded by a ten-foot chain-link fence. Cars were huddled up next to the mass of the club itself like chicks under a hen, but the asphalt lot stretched out empty and wide around them. The Comet slid into the opening smooth as silk. I killed the ignition and reached into the back seat to get my coat.

It was a real version of what Larson had on earlier, a lightweight leather city jacket that hit me about knee length. Pulling it on over my head was awkward, but I hate driving in a coat, which is why it was in the back seat. However, I did need the coverage to hide my weapons, so I had to put it on in the car; therefore, I pulled it over my head.

I had the Desert Eagle under my left arm in a shoulder holster, my backup Taurus .44 Magnum bulldog in a lower back holster set for left-hand draw, and a Benelli pump action .12 gauge shotgun in a modified thigh holster on my right thigh. The Benelli was sawed off and had a pistol grip, so it was short enough that the coat would hide it as long as I paid attention and did not break concealment. Pressure held the shotgun in the holster so I could tear it off and use it in a flash. I also had ammo and clips stashed in the jacket and on various parts of my person. There was an ASP extendable baton in a pocket on the shotgun holster, held in place by Velcro. Collapsed to eleven inches, it fit just fine beside the shotgun, but extended it was a thirty-one-inch steel rod. Inside each boot were knives, two matching stilettos with eight-inch blades that had silver wire hammered into them. My St. Benedict cross beside the St. Michael medal around my neck, blessed rosary in my pocket, and I was loaded for vampire.

Larson's hand on my arm was feather light. “So what kind of plan do you have?”

“We go in, ask for this Gregorios guy. We talk to him and see what he knows about the attack. If he won't talk, or tries to lie to us, then I begin hitting him in the face until he does.” Sarcastic, but this was about my normal plan for getting information.

“Are you planning on killing him?”

I turned and looked at him to see if he was being serious. By the look on his face, he was. “When dealing with vampires it is usually for the best. You don't go fucking with them unless you plan to take them out. So, no, I don't plan on killing him tonight, but it is a viable option I am keeping on the table.”

“Why do you need so many guns if we are just getting information?”

I was growing a little tired of Larson. He had watched me load up, so he knew how much hardware I was carrying. He had been in that alley with me earlier, so he knew it was all justified, but still, he was acting like a civilian.

“First of all, someone is already gunning for my ass, so I am making sure I am ready for what they might do next. Remember how close things were in that alley when we met. Secondly, we are about to go knock some heads together at a club owned by a six-hundred-year-old vampire. There is a pretty good chance things will get out of hand.”

Light from the parking lot gleamed on his glasses as he fidgeted with them. “Well, since you are dragging me into this, can I have a weapon too?”

So this was the reason for the twenty questions. He had a point and it made me think better of him. I was making him go into what I knew would probably be a dangerous situation. For his own safety, he should have a way to defend himself. Would I give him a gun? Hell no. He was way too much of an amateur to trust with a firearm. Thankfully, there are a lot of ways to deal with vampires.

Being evil, they hate, fear, and can be harmed by holy objects. Opening the glove compartment, I pulled out a handful of rosaries and two plastic bottles of holy water. They were the sport drink kind with squeeze tops. I had an unlimited supply of holy water, blessed crosses, and rosaries thanks to Father Mulcahy. Handing them to Larson, I looked him dead in the eye.

“Listen to me. Put the holy water in your jacket pocket and the rosaries around your neck, under your shirt. Keep them hidden and do not pull them out until I give the word. Things gets scary, I don't give a damn, keep these hidden.” The last thing I needed was for it to get tense and Larson to panic and pull out a cross. That would make shit hit the fan quickly, just like it had earlier in the alleyway. I leaned in, getting close to stress my point. “Maintain your cool, no matter what goes on here. Got it?”

Larson nodded and put the rosaries over his head. Pulling on the neck of his T-shirt, they slid under safely out of sight. He leaned over and put the holy water bottles in a pocket of his big coat. Once he was settled, I nodded and we got out of the car.

Night air blew cool around me, rustling across the back of my skull. My hands slid into the pockets and kept my jacket held closed so the wind didn't blow it open, breaking concealment. Even I couldn't walk around openly displaying this much hardware. I have all the applicable weapons permits, and I have worked with the police enough that they look the other way when I do my job. Most of the time anyway. The monsters do a good job of hiding, but cops still run into the weird stuff if they are on the job any amount of time. If things got too bad for them, they had my number.

Assuming Larson was following, I turned and headed toward the club. We should be able to walk in, question our guy, get our answers, and hit the road. Yep, it should be that simple.

Yeah, right.

Vampires always have a way of screwing up your plans.

BOOK: Blood and Bullets

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