Shrouds of Darkness (8 page)

It was a major hit by someone with enough resources to hire a mongrel. The most likely scenario is a rival family, perhaps someone new, trying to carve out an empire of their own after removing the competition. A new player taking on two established crime lords at the same time? It seems unlikely, but I stopped underestimating human stupidity long ago.

I’ve been around a long time and I am familiar with most other players with territory butting up against Yuri’s. Some are larger and stronger but are content to let Yuri run his business as he is not an expansionist and is fairly benign as far as Mafioso go. They know him as an honest dealer and are content with having him as a neighbor.

This leads me back to a new entity, picking a smaller operation as its target to take over. But it was two targets, and although few would miss Hanako’s ninja clan, some would take offense to new competition. My conjecture is getting me nowhere so I shelve my thoughts until my mind is clearer and I return to my lair.

I live in a large, brick building that had once been a factory of some kind that turned out wrought iron for things like fences, gates, and decorations. I make my home in the main floor of the building while I keep my office upstairs. A sign pointing to the external steel stairway directs people to it and warns them not to try my front door.

Heavy steel bars cover the few high windows and the door itself is half inch steel. Had the mission at the Alamo been similarly built, Davy Crocket and his crew could have stood off the entire Mexican army. Sucks for them.

The sturdy door squeals on its hinges, it’s a feature, not a sign of my neglect, and makes a heavy clanging as I pull it shut and set the hundred pound bar in its cradle to secure it from the inside. Nothing short of heavy explosives will gain anyone entrance and the door leading to my office is of similar quality.

I strip off my ruined jacket and shirt and casually toss them into the forge that once smelted iron. Now its only purpose is to dispose of things I do not want found. A quick look at my wound shows little more than a puckered red weal and that will be gone by morning.

I cross the dark, cavernous interior of my home to the corner that serves as my kitchen—a kitchen that consists of nothing more than refrigerator of bagged blood, a sink, and a gas stove that I use to warm up my sack lunches. I forego heating a pan of water that I would normally use to warm my meal and sip it right out of the bag like some kind of macabre Capri Sun.

I sit down in my recliner, one of the few pieces of furniture I own, and once again replay my evening’s escapade. I chase the possible reasons of the attempted hit around and around and finally concede that it may just remain a mystery to me. With any luck, someone will make another attempt and perhaps then I will have enough pieces of the puzzle to begin putting together a clear picture. I don’t know why I bother myself with something I’m not even being paid for. I guess I just like to figure out puzzles, especially ones where I shoot people.

 I decide that I have spent enough time in useless conjecture and give the wooden arm on the side of my chair a pull, laying the back down and kicking my feet up. Vampires have no physical need for sleep, but after suffering serious injury, we often relax and enter a sort of meditative trance so that the body can focus most of its energy on healing. I do just this and sink deeply into a relaxed state.

I enjoyed sleeping when I was a human and I still cling to that habit like a wino onto his bottle of Ripple. Somehow, it makes me feel more human, almost like I am alive again. Why I want to feel like something I have convinced myself that I despise is beyond me. I refuse to contemplate the meaning or significance of such a mindset.

*****

I find myself inside the dark confines of a grass hut in the sultry, nighttime air. Just beyond the flimsy walls of the single-room dwelling lays a dense jungle that has gone preternaturally quiet. It is the type of silence that only the greatest of predators can create by the power of its presence.

In stark contrast, the scene inside the hut is utter chaos. A woman of Asian heritage is screaming and chattering away in her incoherent babbling. I assume she is begging for her life. She and I are the only ones inside. Correction—the only ones alive. Another correction. She is the only one alive. I died nearly fifty years ago yet I still go on. I am a walking nightmare.

I see her huddling against the far wall amidst the bodies of what I assume is her family. I take another step towards her and she screams with renewed effort. Perhaps she cries for help. There is no one to come. Even if there is another soul left alive in the tiny village, which there isn’t, I made sure of that, there is nothing they could do.

I smile in evil glee as I approach, wearing nothing but a suit of blood like a second skin. My clothing surrendered to the decay-inducing climate of Vietnam long ago. Besides, I am an animal and animals have no need of such human trappings. I need no food, no sustenance from this wretched creature. I have already gorged to over-flowing a dozen kills ago. This isn’t about the need to feed. Not a belly hunger anyway. It is a need to feed the animal I have become. I need to feed that longing for power and control that rages with a thirst that I can never slake, but oh, how I try.

Just as my clawed hand reach out for that slender throat, I bolt upright from my recliner with a ragged gasp. The strangled cry from my nightmare echoes through my home as if the dream scream had followed me into wakefulness.

I stagger to my kitchen and splash cold water on my face. I scrub hard enough to leave my skin raw, but some blood can never be washed away no matter how hard I scour it. That blood has seeped through my pores and into my very soul.

As I search for my phone, I curse myself for allowing myself to slip that far into sleep. I knew better, I knew the dreams would come, especially after a double feeding, but I did it anyway. I think I do it to punish myself. That’s what my shrink says, but they’re all quacks so what do they know?

I fumble with my phone but manage to press the buttons in the correct order despite my palsied hands. Looking at my shaking digits only serves to make me angry at my apparent weakness.

“Dr. Morison,” I say into the phone before the person on the other end can ever mutter out a “who the hell is this.”

Dr. Stanley Morison is my shrink and one of the few living people that know of the existence of vampires. I was referred to him shortly after becoming a Sheriff for the Council. He is trusted but carefully watched in case he suddenly has a change of heart and feels the need to warn the rest of the world of the danger that walks amongst them.

“Leo?” comes the answer from the other end. “Jesus, do you know what time it is? You’re lucky, I’d tell my most my clients to call my office in the morning and hang up on them.”

“Most of your clients won’t eat you in a moment of pique,” I reply.

Stanley disregards my threat. “We both know you are not going to eat me. Bad dreams again?”

“Yeah.”

“Tell me what happened tonight.”

I tell Dr. Morison about my midnight meal, my seconds, and the attempted assassination with my usual aplomb. This was far from the first time I have related similar stories and he stopped being shocked years ago.

“It sounds like quite a stressful evening.”

I give a shrug he cannot possibly see, but he knows me well enough to interpret my silence.

“Deny it all you like, but inside you dwells a conscience that is only going to continue to haunt you like this until you face it and accept its existence.”

“Not possible,” I growl into the receiver. “A conscience would be extremely inconvenient given my condition and occupational requirements.”

I hear him sigh into the phone. “Nevertheless, it is there and it will not be ignored. Because it is a part of you, it is as stubborn as you are. It has been a while since we sat down and talked. Why don’t you schedule an appointment with my secretary? I’ll tell her to make room for you at your convenience.”

My first inclination is to reject his offer. “Are you an aspiring pilot too?”

Stanley doesn’t get the reference but he’s smart guy and knows that it’s a shot at his hourly rate.

“Alright, I’ll call Jeanine tomorrow even though it’s a waste of time. You’ve had ten years to fix me, you old fraud.”

I hang up the phone, cutting him off in mid-laugh. There is no way I am going to rest again now, so I decide to put my idle hands to work. I pull out a loose brick and press the button hidden behind it. With a hiss of hydraulics, a section of floor raises up a few inches then rolls back just enough for me navigate the short flight of stairs hidden beneath it.

Fluorescent lights flicker to life at my approach, revealing racks of weapons of all makes and models. Behind the various handguns, rifles, submachine guns, smoke and flash grenades and a host of other lethal devices run several water pipes, gas lines, and electrical conduits.

I converted the old maintenance passage and hid the entrance to it when I bought the building over twenty years ago. Along with my host of lethal weaponry, a couple of workbenches take up much of the remaining available space up. One side is dedicated to machining with a grinder, drill press, a small metal lathe, and a few other things necessary to fabricate those tools I cannot easily buy off the open market. Across from that lies a host of electrical components from which I make my transmitters, detonators, and other nifty little James Bond-type toys.

I select a weapon at random, break it down to its smallest components, clean it, examine the parts for damage, and then put it all back together again. I have become highly proficient over the years and even this level of scrutiny and care takes only a few minutes before I move on to another one and repeat the process.

Some people would call me anally retentive; my shrink calls it obsessively compulsive. I call it taking pride in my work and respecting the materials of my trade. Few things are more annoying than pressing the button on a transmitter connected to several pounds of plastic explosive only to have it fail to ignite because you allowed the moist air to corrode the contacts.

I lose track of time being so lost in my ritual when I hear a chime indicating that someone has walked into my office upstairs. I have company. The fact that they followed the sign that instructs them to climb the steel stairs to my office and stay indicates that it is likely a client. Despite feeling a bit taxed from my gunshot wound, I am glad to possibly have a paying customer so soon after having spent a good portion of last night’s paycheck on my lawyer and desert cleanup.

I reassemble the
Brugger & Thomet TP9 that I am performing my maintenance on and stalk back up the steps into my converted home. The place always looks cavernous after spending a few hours below ground in my little armory. I grab a fresh shirt and slip on my trench coat from the closet that contains no less than a dozen identical replacements.

Slipping my blade and an m1911 .45 into my pocket, I ascend the inner stairs up to my office. I use as many of my senses as I can to ascertain the situation upstairs. Halfway up, I can hear two voices, one male and one female. The male’s voice sounds a bit hostile. As I near the top of the stairs, I get the faint whiff of perfume. It is pleasant and lightly applied. The voices become distinct to my well-attuned ears even through the thick, steel door.

Despite its weight, the door opens effortlessly and without appreciable sound, as only I know how to do, and step into my inner office. The pair waiting on me is just beyond the closed wooden door that leads to my outer office where a sign tells people to either wait or call for an appointment. Apparently, they have decided to wait.

The man is apparently displeased with the decision to come see me. I listen to him as he says several unkind things about me, most notably the fact that I am a vampire. If this weren’t enough to give me pause, I receive an olfactory slap in the face that rocks me on my heels and causes my mostly healed wound to throb in sympathy. Beneath the pleasant scent of perfume lays the distinct fragrance of half-weres.

Now this is really getting interesting. I can go months without getting so much as a whiff of a mongrel or full werewolf. Now I cross paths with three in the matter of a few hours. I’m not the type to believe in coincidence and I immediately go on alert.