Blood and Bullets Read online

  “Yep, but that can’t be it. Nosferatu are the bottom-feeders of the vamp community. No other bloodsuckers would posse up to avenge them.” Pushing with my feet spun me to look at Larson sitting in his chair. He looked really uncomfortable. As my dad used to say before he left this shitty world, he looked as uncomfortable as a nine-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

  Either that or as a whore in church.

  “How did you wind up in that alley tonight to meet me?”

  A thin hand rose from his lap and rubbed the side of his face. Nervous gestures dominated him. Touching his face, adjusting his glasses, licking his lips. All of them done over and over, almost like a habit. He swallowed and said, “I was listening for information at Varney’s when I was approached by a girl who offered to tell me where I could find a vampire to stake.”

  Varney’s was a tiny Goth club on the southside of Atlanta. It was a hole in the wall, full of all the Goths who were still stuck in the nineties scene. So imagine a tiny room where everything is painted black and red and full of sweaty, overweight middle-agers dressed in black, wearing greasepaint makeup, heavy mascara, and black fingernail polish. I had never, ever heard of a vampire even setting foot in there.

  “Did you get the name of this girl?”

  Larson shook his head.

  “What did she look like?”

  Larson scratched his chin. “She was young. So young I don’t even know how she got into the club. She had long blond hair. It was pretty tangled.”

  “Let me guess, she was wearing a bright yellow sundress?” Larson nodded. I turned back to Kat. “I bet this was the same vampire who sent me to see Larson here. Did you pull a match from the picture I sent you?”

  She popped back into her chair and began typing and clicking again.

  Larson leaned over to me. His Adam’s apple bobbed as he swallowed. “That was a vampire I talked to?”

  No wonder he tried to stake me. He didn’t even recognize a vampire when he was just a few feet away from one. I looked over at him and raised one eyebrow. “Yeah, it was, but don’t worry, she’s a pile of dust now.” I turned back to Kat and she shot me a look. I smiled big at her. So what if I was yanking Larson’s chain a little? He had tried to stake me earlier tonight, so I was justified.

  A picture unfolded on the screen. The face staring out was the same vampire who had sent me into that alley earlier tonight. In this picture she was a smiling, happy girl posing for the camera. My head swam for a second as the memories tried to surface and I shoved them back in their box. Father Mulcahy tapped on the table to get my attention. The scar tissue he uses for eyebrows lifted over one eye at me. He knew how close the picture was to my daughter, hell, he had performed her funeral along with my wife and son, and he also knew how I am about that. To distract myself, I pointed at the picture and looked the question at Larson. He nodded and pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose.

  “Alyssa Burton, age fourteen, disappeared from Cross Plains, Texas, approximately three months ago. There is a reward of one hundred thousand dollars for information leading to her return.” Kat turned and looked at us.

  “A hundred grand is a hefty reward. Are the parents wealthy?” I asked. Kat shook her head.

  “From my research, no. Dad is a hardware store owner in Cross Plains, but it isn’t a very big town. The reward has apparently come from her family, friends, and the community as a whole. Her family is stable. Father and mother still together, two younger siblings ages twelve and seven. I found pages of hers on a few social network sites and they all indicate she was happy. There are also almost twenty pages on those same sites looking for information about her and offering the reward that was set up by her friends and maintained by them even now.”

  Three months is a lifetime for teenagers. If they were still maintaining those pages, then she must have been loved by them. The big reward put up by them and the community was a sign of love too. So why had she gone missing? Most runaways do so because of trauma from home, but this girl was well loved and, by all indications, happy. So how did she get to Georgia as a bloodsucker?

  “Did your research turn up anyone in her circle of friends who disappeared with her?” Kat shook her head. Happy runaways generally leave on an adventure, but they almost always take someone with them. “Any ties to Georgia you can find? Friends or relatives in the area? Interests she had that might lure her here?”

  “No, she has no family or friends who are from here. There is no reason she would be in Georgia that I can find.” If Kat couldn’t find a reason, it wasn’t there to find. She is a magician on the Internet.

  “Okay. Isn’t Western Jim still in Texas?” The blond ponytail bobbed up and down. “We should call him and see if he knows anything.”

  “Done and done. I left a message on his phone about two hours ago when I found Alyssa in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Kids network. He hasn’t called back yet.”

  This was not worrisome. Western Jim was a monster hunter like me. He had been a Texas Ranger in the seventies when he ran up against a Thessalonian blood-cult and had to shoot it out with an ancient entity bent on reinstalling human sacrifices. He was a crotchety old bastard and quick as a rattlesnake with his six-gun. We had worked together a few times when we were chasing monsters and wound up in each other’s territory. He would call when he was free, but it might take a bit if he was knee-deep in a hunt. Kat’s face turned sad.

  “I called Detective Longyard and let him know that the girl would not be found so he could contact her parents. He wanted to know if you needed any help.”

  “Not yet. Tell him I will call if I need him.”

  Detective John Longyard was the lead investigator on the murder of my family. He is a good man and knows what I do. He is my go-to guy on the police force and helped me cut around them when needed. He gets me information if I need it, gets me into crime scenes, and gets me out of complications that come from having to skirt the law when things get hairy. Or scaly. Or fangy. It was hard on him sometimes, but he did it out of duty to his fellow man. My feet dropped to the floor as I sat up.

  “So now we have a newly turned girl from Texas who is in Georgia and acting as a setup to try to get me killed.” I looked around the table. “Anybody have any ideas how to start figuring this one out?”

  Larson coughed and cleared his throat. His cheeks burned red. A pale hand drifted over his forehead as he began talking, the words stumbling from his mouth in nervousness. “New vampires don’t travel very far, not by themselves. They don’t have the control over their urges to feed. From all evidence she was turned in Texas and then came here, so she didn’t travel alone. She would have had to have a stronger vampire to keep her in check or it would have been a bloodbath between Texas and here.” He sat back with pride on his face under the flush of his embarrassment from when he started.

  So he actually knew a thing or two about a thing or two. That’s fine. He had no practical knowledge whatsoever. He had actually sat and talked with a vampire without being able to spot her for what she was. It was a little like saying he had been petting a puppy and not noticing that it had rabies.

  “So, we are talking about a new vampire in town.” Father Mulcahy blew smoke toward the ceiling. Kat looked at him shaking her head.

  “No, that is not possible. If there was a new powerful vampire in the territory, there would have been a turf war. I would know about it because vampire activity would have spiked.” She definitely would have known too. Because of Kat’s past with vampires, she kept closer tabs on them than on any other supernaturals in the area. Hatred will make you obsessive sometimes. “In fact, just the opposite has happened. The vampires have been really quiet the last few weeks.”

  A lull in vamp activity? Normally the vampires mind their p’s and q’s. They are evil, but with the plethora of victims that can be seduced into giving blood, they rarely kill anyone. Usually they stay involved in their crimes and misdemeanors, keeping themselves oc
cupied.

  It’s almost like a game for them. Because of this, the cops actually keep them in check pretty well. They don’t know what they are dealing with usually, but it just works itself out somehow. It also keeps them out of my line of fire for the most part. I am just one gun in a war, so my focus is always on the monster at hand. For an area the size of Metro Atlanta, vampires are almost like a rat problem. They are there, and they need to be exterminated, but you don’t see them, so they fall to the bottom of the priority list.

  Well, tonight’s attack changed all that. Vampire equals top of the priority list.

  Number one with a silver fucking bullet.

  “Have there been any reports of vampire activity on our Web site?” Kat shook her head no. Larson looked over at me.

  “You have a Web site?”

  I snorted through my nose. “Of course.” Who doesn’t, I didn’t ask. “It’s how we get work to do sometimes.” I turned back to Kat and she shook her head. “The problem as I see it is that there is a ton of stuff we don’t know.” I ticked my points off on the fingers of an upraised hand. “We don’t know who the bad guy is, why they tried to kill me, how they accomplished the setup, why Larson here was used as bait ... In fact, all we know is that the problem is a vampire-related one, and someone tried to take me out.” I stroked my goatee, thinking. “Does anybody know of any big happenings in the vampire world, anything that maybe doesn’t have anything to do with us yet, but will?”

  They all looked at me. I could see them reaching for conclusions and could also tell that they were not going to come up with any. Time for a different tack.

  “Okay, Kat, find out if there is a major vampire player that may have recently dropped off the radar. Maybe the person setting me up has had a new development in their unlife and they are blaming me for it.”

  Kat’s quick typing caused the screen to change to the Internet. Web sites popped up and dropped off as Kat searched the net the way only she can. She would stop on a Web site for a second, rapidly read some bit of information, switch screens, and go off on another search. It really would be amazing if you could keep up with it. I couldn’t, so I just let my eyes go unfocused and dropped into my head to think about the problem at hand.

  A lot of folks get scattered when someone is trying to kill them. I don’t. Panic does no one any good, except for the people who are trying to kill you. I only care why someone was trying to kill me so I could figure out who was trying to kill me.

  One problem at a time.

  Also, since I know and have come to grips with the fact that I will not live to a ripe old age and die in my sleep, I was going to be proactive. Find the bad guys, kill their ass. That was my goal, figuring out why was just a means to an end. I had a plan forming in my head to smoke the bastard out. I just needed a name and a place to start. For that, I waited on Kat.

  Looking over at Father Mulcahy, I saw that he was sitting still and quiet, like he normally did. Years of monastery training ensured he could sit like a rock. That and being an army sniper somewhere in the world that had gone to shit before joining the priesthood.

  Larson was also sitting stone still, enraptured by the screen as Kat worked. He wasn’t blinking and his mouth was hanging open slightly in awe. I told you it was amazing if you could keep up. Apparently Larson could. My eyes slipped closed so I could think some more, and I didn’t open them until I heard Kat give a quiet, but triumphant, “aha,” and stop typing.

  A picture filled the screen. It was a vampire. He looked pretty normal for a corpse. Vampires are always a bit off, especially the older they are. The vampire in them doesn’t quite get the human side, and when you throw in fashions through the ages ... Well, let’s just say they usually act and look a bit dramatic.

  This one had long, wavy black hair with sharply trimmed sideburns that met across his face into a thick, Fu Manchu-style moustache and a soul patch. Pale, he had a heavy brow and a sharp nose. Dark eyes rimmed in red sunk over sharp cheekbones, one of which had a strange star-shaped scar on it. He must have gotten the scar before becoming a vampire, or he had been wounded with a blessed object.

  Vampires can close any wounds, unless they were caused by something holy. The picture was taken from the waist up. He looked like he was slender, but broad of shoulder, and dressed in a high-dollar pinstripe suit. Admittedly, he was a good-looking corpse. I didn’t recognize him, but he looked like a player.

  Kat’s voice cut across the room, clear and concise. “Gregorios, no surname. Owns a vampire dance club downtown called Helletog. That’s his legitimate business. Illegal businesses include several vampire bordellos tucked away in different parts of the city. They also double as distribution centers for dealing crack and finding victims.” She clicked some more. “Supposedly over six hundred years old, and with the largest kiss in the city. He normally keeps a pretty high profile and is a minor celebrity in the Goth and fetish scenes, but very recently has dropped out of sight, only making minimal appearances at his club.”

  This bloodsucker fit the bill. A big player, but laying low. It was as good a place to start as any. “Send the addresses to my phone and me and Larson here will go knocking and see if we can find this asshole and figure out what he knows.”

  Larson looked at me sharply, eyes wide. “Why am I going?”

  I held up my hand to stop him from speaking. “You don’t get a choice on this either, pal. You are in this and I want to know why. They used you to get me in a trap, so you are stuck with this until the end.” I waved my hand in a flourish as I stood up. “Besides, you wanted to be a vampire hunter. Here’s your chance to see how it’s done.”

  I knew he had probably changed his mind about being a vampire hunter after the attack earlier. Seeing the monsters in action will do that. They are not nearly as horrible in theory as they are in real life. Again, fiction paints vampires as cool and sexy. In real life, they are vicious, deadly creatures and we are their food. I was taking Larson with me to learn more about why he was involved, but I also wanted to turn him away from wanting to hunt monsters. He wasn’t up to the job.

  Hell, I am a little more than human and some days I’m not up to the job. Going down this path, I am going to die. I have made peace with that, but that didn’t mean I was going to just let him follow the same path to the same end.

  I mean, I’m an asshole, but I’m not a fucking asshole.

  6

  We were in the Comet cruising down Interstate 75 heading into the city of Atlanta. That’s where Helletog was. Here in the South you do a lot of driving. It’s like the city is where you go to do certain things, but most of us live outside of it in the suburbs. There is space in the South for us to spread out and we take advantage of that. We have MARTA—which is public transport consisting of a few trains and buses—but there is no true subway in Atlanta, and if there were, it damn sure wouldn’t go to the suburbs. So we drive. Parking is plentiful, the streets are wide, and we love our cars.

  I have a few vehicles, but I mostly drive the Comet. I love this car. It was built back when cars were meant to go fast and last a long time. It’s older than I am. A ’66 Mercury Comet, it’s two tons of metal. Long in the hood and with a wide set of doors, it looks vaguely like a shark, menacing and sinister.

  The engine is a 351 Windsor, which is car talk for eight cylinders built for nothing but power and speed. Of course the car is painted black. The interior is from a Lincoln Continental, so it is plush and soft. You can ride in comfort for hours. I am a big guy, and I need a big car to ride for any length of time.

  I can drive anything, but the more comfortable I am, the better I do so. It gets jack for gas mileage, but I am okay with that. I don’t drive this car to save the environment. I drive it because I love it.

  You may not understand, but if you ever got behind the wheel of a car like this you would. It’s a hotrod. I love the sound of the motor as it roars to life. I love the rock of the car in idle because the motor is like a beast chained to a stake, wai
ting for the links to break so it can roar forth and wreak havoc. The rich smell of gasoline and oil that comes through as you drive, the scent of metal and leather inside the car, these bring me peace. There are no antilock brakes and very little power steering. When you brake, you brake all of a sudden. When you swing into a curve, you hold that car or it will get away from you. The Comet is the loudest, fastest, most dangerous car I have ever driven.

  And I love it.

  Larson and I were in the front seat. He was seat belted in and his knuckles were white as he held on to the door. I would bet it was the first time he had ever ridden in a muscle car that was being let loose to do what it was made for, which is eating highway miles. Highway 75 is a wide, sweeping stretch of asphalt. Up to sixteen lanes on each side and smooth as silk. The Comet was wound up in her high-range and we were cruising down the road just a peg over a hundred miles an hour.

  My finger pushed buttons on the face of the MP3 player mounted on the dash of the car. I love digital technology, so the Comet’s stereo was compatible with my player. Using MP3’s gives me the range of music I listen to in an easy, portable form. It took a second, but I finally found what I wanted. One last push of a button sent music flooding over the noise of the motor.

  An electric organ started off with a light blues boogie run. It danced lightly above the sound of the engine. After a few seconds, a slap bass, guitar, and drummer kicked in, driving the organ into a blues funk corner. That’s when she started singing, whiskey-tinged gospel voice cutting in, carrying with it the promise of everything that is woman. Larson’s eyes got wide and he leaned over to me.

  “Who is that?”

  I smiled. “Susan Tedeschi.” My fingers rested on the volume knob. “Sit back, shut up, and learn something.” Turning the knob pushed the music through the speakers, filling the inside of the car with the blues.