Fanghunters (6 page)

Dom returned to his apartment and went
straight into his bare kitchen. He put his shopping bag on the counter, just as
his stomach rumbled. Not only did he need fast cash to pay off the landlord,
but he also
needed
to fill his cupboards with food. He
was literally down to the bare bones. He’d already pawned any items lingering
around the apartment he didn’t need: old jewelry, clothes, even a small replica
of the Empire State Building he bought after a visit to New York in grade
school. He thought about cashing in his lucky Zippo too but decided against it.
It could come in handy...

With the small amount of cash he received,
he bought emergency food: bread, cheese and a bottle of Bud, just to see him
through the night. What was left, he spent on the tools he’d need for the job
the next day. He opened a shopping bag and pulled out the rubber mallet and
metal stake, the kind used in camping, he just bought from Home Depot and
stared at them. More dreamlike reality struck him. This was the type of stuff
from the movies: stakes through the heart. What he really wanted was a gun, but
that was way out of his budget. Or a huge knife, but that was out of his budget
too. He’d seen that vamp bleed had
made
him bleed. They were flesh and
blood. Some type of organic creature that was susceptible to the same bodily
damage as humans. But, another part of him thought it might just be an
illusion. He was sure he saw Freddy Krueger bleed too, and that bastard never
died... He decided it would probably be best to stick to the tried and tested
methods, just in case there was some mystic, supernatural crap going on and
bullets and knives didn’t kill vamps, but only a stake to the heart would. He
didn’t wanna be left high and dry, so he played it safe and went for the stake
and mallet. That way there was no danger. Plus it was all he could afford
anyway...

He put the items safely away before
grabbing a chunk of cheese and a couple of slices of bread and throwing them
together in a sandwich. He grabbed his Bud and went and sat on the edge of his
couch while he chowed, his hands trembling. He was edgy, nervous about the
job. 

He finished the last of his stale bread and
cheese, the chewed lump easing down his gullet slow and steady. He washed it
down with Bud. It hit his empty stomach with a groan. He wasn’t eating well, he
knew it, and now wondered how it would affect his performance tomorrow.  He
puffed his cheeks and looked down again at his trembling hands. Nerves were
starting to fray.
Come on, buddy... You can do this.

From the coffee table, he grabbed his
wallet. He opened it up and fished out the photo of him, Eddie, and Dad. He’d
managed to tape it back together as best he could. Staring at it suddenly gave
him a small burst of strength; something to help him through. He ran a finger
along a taped-up tear, nodding his head, his eyes welling again. One day, he’d
find them. He promised.

They were all that was left. Even the
Father had deserted. Where to, who knew?

They were questions for another day. First,
he had to make sure tomorrow went smoothly.         

He replaced the photo in his wallet and
sighed again, falling back in his couch. He stared at the ceiling while he
finished his Bud, going over and over in his mind what he was going to do the
next day and how.

Drake stood in the center of his
temporary chamber, draped in his gown, his hair slicked back from his brow. He
stared at the boards nailed over the window while he plotted his next move. He
was safely out of reach of the Order for now, but their tentacles could stretch
far when necessary. And now that they were looking for him, they’d definitely
be on the move. The come down from the dizzying heights of the Loop to a
rundown, pissant slum was a necessary step backward. He needed to lay low, to
have his fanghead protectors keep him cover till he worked out what to do next.
He didn’t even feel safe still being in Chicago, but he couldn’t stray too far;
he hadn’t decided if his future lay in this city or somewhere else.

It all came down to what he did with the
Eye.

He sighed and reached up for the solid
silver pendant hanging around his neck. The one that contained the Eye.
Stealing it from Leviah was more than a risk; if Leviah had caught even a sniff
of him sneaking around his quarters, he’d have torn him to shreds and fed the
remains to the seagulls loitering at the edges of the Chicago River. It was
Veronica that told him to do it; her idea. She knew all too well the influence
the Eye had over Leviah and the Order. Her vision was to bring the Order to its
knees. Drake shared that vision. And he put the plan in motion. But now the Eye
was in his grasp, and he could feel the vibrations, the darkly ecstatic thrum
it emitted, he found himself caught in two minds.

The power was in his grasp.
Should he
just hand it over to Veronica?
He didn’t trust her.

He clenched the pendant tight. It enveloped
him in an aura of spite and sheer fearless rage that he never thought possible,
even going full vampire didn’t hold the promise the Eye had. It was the conduit
to pure evil, the telescope into the black heart, the grim void that he’d
sought for so long even before Leviah had come and taken him to the dark place,
given him that blissful taste of his unique venom and turned him to their side.
Leviah placed his trust in Drake, making him his lieutenant, something the low-level
street thug gangs of Chicago couldn’t even dream of. Those punks weren’t jack
compared to the Order. And Drake then found out what real power was; his
limited lifespan now limitless, the visions, the domination, the thrill of
being part of a secretive organization. Being at the very pinnacle of it, with
soldiers beneath him, helping to mold society in the way they saw fit, which
was usually to humanity’s detriment. And why not? Screw em. What good were they?
Bags of bones rotting away from the moment they pull their first pitiful
breath. Drake nodded to himself. Yeah, Leviah and the Order’s vision was so
much better than the Creator’s. more advanced, structured. It had a direction,
a plan, something severely lacking on the other side...

And Drake had been full on with that plan
until Veronica showed up with her alternate vision.
“We can lead the Order,”
she’d whispered into his ear, her voice taking on the delectable tone of a
scheming harlot. “
You
can lead the Order,” she’d added with a lick of
her lips. “All we need is the Eye...” That precious relic Leviah guarded like a
jealous lover. And it was in his grip.

And now that he had it, and absorbed its
ethereal jolts like a static charge, he was finding himself reconsidering.
Why
hand the power over to Veronica?
The thing he’d risked his existence for?
All that he’d gained attained, to lose it in an instant? No, he had three clear
choices. One: hand the Eye over to Veronica and trust that she wouldn’t double
cross him. Two: bribe Leviah; offer the Eye in return for even more power.

Or, three: keep the Eye for himself and
take his place as the new head of the Order. Vampire King Drake. It sounded,
kinda nice...

He’d need an army to take down Leviah, and
that would take time. But, with the Eye on his side, he had collateral.

A shiver coursed through him; something
that hadn’t happened in what seemed an eternity. The Eye was helping him to
feel again. But it was all darkness. Hate, bile, jealousy, revenge. Exquisite
emotions and states of mind that fueled rage, the very thing that destroyed
armies and civilizations. Power itself.

He rolled his eyes to the left and gazed
down at the lump sitting in the dirty, broken chair in the corner of the room.
He was staring into the gloom ahead with blank eyes, his hands curled up into
fists. Ready to protect his father whenever necessary. Nighttime had fallen and
it was time to feed.

“You! Marlon!”
D
rake
called in a stern voice.

Marlon’s glazed eyes rolled up toward him.

“Over here!” Drake ordered.

Marlon got to his feet and marched over to
his master with the obedience of a well-trained dog.

Drake now rolled his eyes up to meet
Marlon’s. He grinned. Big guys always made the best protection. He stood on
tiptoes, before he grabbed Marlon’s jaw, and snapped his head back. In one
swift movement, he thrust his open mouth toward Marlon’s pulsing jugular,
sinking his teeth into the flesh. He immediately sucked out the precious life
force before injecting his pleasure into Marlon’s system. The pendant
containing the Eye bounced rhythmically on his chest as he fed, sending tremors
of hate coursing through him.

Alongside the coppery taste of blood, the
sensation was beyond bliss.

Dom threw a stick of gum in his mouth
and chewed, the action helping mask his nerves. From the abandoned garage
where
he’d parked his car, he kept his eyes on the front garden of 1428,
and the two fangheads in their regular positions. He checked the time: 1:21 pm.
It was almost time to strike, and he was feeling it; the nerves, the anxiety.
He managed to get zero hours of sleep the night before. Instead, he lay in his
bed for hours just staring at the darkness, wondering exactly what was going to
happen today. How events would unfold. He envisaged a million different
scenarios, some victorious, some failures. He tried to play out every
possibility in his mind, hoping to avoid any nasty surprises. The truth was
that he had no idea what was going on inside that derelict, boarded-up house.
It was a box of tricks, a mystery, but one he needed to solve. Today.

He glanced at his reflection in the rear-view.
He looked pale; bloodshot eyes stared back at him, dark rings hanging under
them as if he hadn’t had a lick of sleep for ten years. On top of that, that
nasty tingling had started up the moment he neared the house. That venom
detector. It trickled and tickled down his spine like the delicate fingers of a
specter. He tapped the steering wheel, his jaw working up and down like a
piston, his stare fixed on the two guards in their deckchairs.

Come on,
he
urged.
Go...

They stayed as they were. Dom huffed. He
wished he could just cut the next hour out of his life, and then continue from
there. Preferably with the vamp’s body in his trunk on the way up to
Beauchamp’s mansion. He checked the time again: 1:23. What felt like an
electric eel suddenly squirmed in his stomach. He took in a deep breath and jigged
his knees up and down to get the blood flowing through his legs. He knew he
would be nervous, but not this bad.

Just be like Arnie in
The Terminator
.
Storm in there, smoke the guy, then march triumphantly out.

Yeah right.
He wished it were that easy.

He stared hard at the fangheads.
Come
on, isn’t it Big Mac time yet?

They just sat there in their deckchairs
like they were at the beach. Man, those assholes had to really be hooked on
that venom to do that all day, every day. The realization that he was just like
them only last week made him shiver. It was mind control; pure and simple. Dom
shook his head in disbelief, expelling air from his lungs.

He then ran jittery hands through his hair.
He didn’t know how much more tension he could take. The only good thing was
that the street was empty. No hobos, stragglers, or loiterers to bother him. He
just watched. And waited. Watched and waited for that magic moment when they’d
leave.

And then it would be on.

*****

Craig
checked
his watch: 1:27.

Time to go. He turned his head to the side
to meet Jeff’s almost telepathic stare. Craig tapped his watch. Jeff nodded.

Craig shot up from his seat and cracked his
knuckles. Jeff eased himself up from his chair more tentatively. He put his
arms across his chest. “You know, Drake would kill us if he knew what we were
up to,” he said in a low voice, his eyes darting left and right.

Craig flipped his hand on the air. “Relax,
he’s snoozing, so he’ll never know.”

Jeff puffed his cheeks and nodded. “Yeah,
maybe I’m just worrying too much that something will happen to him while we’re
not around.”

Craig grinned. “And that’s exactly why he
gets Marlon to sleep up there with him.”

Jeff met his stare. “Cause he’s twice the
size of us?”

Craig shook his head. “No, cause he knows
we’re a couple of slackers. Now, let’s go.”

A twitchy grin spread across Jeff’s face.
Craig set off, watching the streets with edgy eyes. Jeff followed, scratching
his armpit.

They hit the sidewalk and headed away from
the house.

*****

Dom’s heart jumped into his throat. The
two fangheads just got up to leave. Right on cue. He
watched
them, jaw slack, bending his head down below the steering wheel,
just his eyes peeking out over the top of it like he was the world’s worst spy.
All he was missing was a fake mustache. In a few seconds, they were on the
sidewalk. A few seconds more and they were turning down the street on the next
block. Then, they were out of sight.

Dom’s eyes widened.
This was it!

He sprang into life. He immediately pulled
down the lid of the glove compartment and grabbed the metal stake and rubber
mallet, stuffing them into the belt of his jeans. He then closed his eyes and
sucked in a deep breath.
Calm down, buddy. Just calm down.

He tried to let his mind go blank. Blank.
Blank. Blank. Nothing in it. He exhaled, opened his eyes again, and in the next
instant, he flung open the door, letting in the sound of the outside world,
which was dead silence. He stepped out onto the dirty concrete and then threw
the door shut behind him. The sound reverberated all around him. Now, standing
on the street, he quickly realized that his legs were numb and shaking.

Get it together, buddy, or you die here.
Today!

Think about what these things did to
you.
And he did. He’d been bitten, pumped full of
mind-controlling venom, kept in a basement as a slave. And one of the creatures
that did it all to him was in that house. He nodded his head in understanding,
suddenly feeling stronger.

Payback.

He scanned the area. The street was still
thankfully empty. No passing cars, no kids on bikes, no hobos searching
dumpsters. Nothing. And now no fangheads. Just him, a bunch of derelict houses,
and a sleeping vamp. A shiver juddered through him just as he got moving,
hitting the dirty sidewalk, zipping his leather jacket up to obscure his vampire-slaying
tools. He had a quick glance across the street at 1428, the empty deckchairs in
the garden, and his route over there. He started to jog towards them, his heart
hammering like Woody Woodpecker had sneaked into his chest and was pecking
away. He puffed his cheeks out in regular bursts. His stomach was turning
itself inside out over and over like the local baker kneading dough. It was
torture.
It’ll all be over soon, buddy,
he kept telling himself as he
approached the house.
He tried to think of good things: things like
blondes in bikinis, beer, and money; especially the money he was gonna get from
that millionaire limey for pulling this off. Money to get his landlord off his
case.

He made it across the street, 1428 just a
little way up. By then his heart was going at a million miles an hour and
tasted like a nugget of hot lead. He wiped grimy sweat that had the texture of
olive oil from his forehead. His mouth was as dry as a lizard’s back. His mind
was going in so many different directions he was almost dizzy; coupled with
that was the tingling in his spine. He wanted to shake it off, get his thoughts
clear on how this was gonna play out, but it was impossible. He just had to
roll with it as best he could.

As he approached the house, his eyes glued
to it, he slowed to a walk, not wanting things to appear too blatant, wanting
to play it cool. On finally reaching it, he stopped and stood at the head of
the front yard, the empty deckchairs
staring back at him as if he’d just
strolled onto a ghost beach. Somewhere in the near distance, a crow cawed. He
took a look around him. The next door house was all boarded up too; ugly
graffiti covered the boards in ineligible black scribbles. He gazed from it
over to the steel shutters obscuring the upstairs window of 1428. The bastard
was probably sleeping in there right now. The thought made him shudder. He had
a final glance over both shoulders; he was still alone.

Time to go in...

He steeled himself, then took his first
tentative step into the yard. The second he did, his breathing seemed to stop
and his heart began to hammer so hard, he could hear it; a bass drum in his
chest. As for the house itself, it now dwarfed him. It appeared to be bending
over him like it was about to swallow him whole, chew him up, then spit the
remains out in the back yard for the crows to come and peck at.

Come on, buddy, get a grip,
he kept telling himself.
Get a grip...

He felt every muscle in his body tense as
he moved past those two empty deckchairs rippling in the breeze. The two guards
had left their weapons by their sides: a cosh, a hammer, a crowbar. Dom gulped.
He definitely didn’t wanna get into a brawl with those two. He sped up
slightly, focusing on the house. He finally crossed the garden path and made it
onto the porch, his sneakers silent on the old wood. Now the cawing crows were
distant, a million miles away like God had muted the world. All he could hear
was the tomb-like silence coming from inside the house. A steel shutter covered
the front door. It had been pulled away and pushed back so many times, it had
been bent and weakened, meaning that he could get past it with ease. He sized
the sheet up before he reached out and grabbed it. It was razor cold. He then
eased it towards him, biting his bottom lip. The sheet squeaked quietly and
scraped a little on the wooden porch. He winced. A slice of darkness spilt out
of the gap he had made, bringing with it an ancient, musky, smell that somehow
reminded him of old churches. He took a peek into the murk, finding that he was
unable to see all the way to the rear of the entrance hall.

It’s very dark in there,
was his first thought. He took in another deep breath and squinted
his eyes; the darkness inside grew darker.
What the hell am I doing?
he
suddenly asked himself as he stared into that abyss.
Why am I doing this?
Turn around, go home and think of something else while you’ve still got the
chance cause once you go in, you might never come back out.
He mulled it
over. Then shook his head. There was no turning back.
Go home to what
exactly anyway?
Loneliness? Isolation? Eviction?

Besides, he was working against the clock
and he didn’t have time to waste thinking about crap like that. He steadied
himself, then carefully eased past the steel sheet. He stepped onto the bare
floorboards of the entrance hall, suddenly feeling like the world’s most stupid
burglar who was about to rob an empty house.

Now, he found himself swallowed whole by
the inner darkness.

The crows outside were now muffled, the
silence surrounding him now amplified and it was an uncomfortable feeling like
being sent on stage in front of a silent and expecting audience for the first time
while they waited for the act to start. He felt exposed, out in the open in a
place he didn’t know jack squat about. An alien in a foreign world.

Get upstairs and kill the vamp!
his mind shouted at him, kicking him into gear.
He scanned the gloom ahead of him, locking his eyes on the flight of
carpetless stairs over to the left, just visible in the light spilling in
through the ajar sheet/door. Dom reached into his jacket and pulled out the
metal stake from his belt, letting it dangle by his side. It felt heavier than
it did before as if it had morphed into an anvil. The passage he was in led
straight into what looked like the kitchen with a closed door embedded in the right-hand
wall. Suddenly, he was asking himself if the vamp could be in that room. He’d
just assumed that he would be upstairs. Bedrooms were usually upstairs and this
asshole would be sleeping. Y
eah, but, this was a vampire and this was a
derelict house. He could pick his bedroom anywhere he wanted.
He checked
his watch. In the sparse light, he could see it was 1:32. It was only a few
minutes beforehand when he was in his car, but that seemed like a lifetime ago.
But one thing hadn’t changed and still remained the same. He didn’t have much
time. He had to get moving upstairs.

But if the target
is
in that room downstairs and you get stuck on the upstairs
floor?
Suddenly things were going a bit wonky.

I haven’t planned this as well as I
thought I did...

And another thing, it would be pitch black
further in the house, and he didn’t think to bring a flashlight with him. He
could just about see the end of the front hallway because of the light coming
in from the entrance, but inside those rooms, it would be like nighttime, cause
the windows were all boarded up.

An idea hit him.
Maybe the lights work.

Hmm.
He spun
his head left and right to see the outline of a light switch on the wall next
to him. He reached out and flicked it. Nothing. Great. He huffed as he reached
into the pocket of his pants and pulled out his lucky Zippo, the one Mary Lou
from Kentucky bought him as a parting gift, even though he didn’t smoke.
Well,
what could you do when God got your bra size and your IQ level ass backwards?
Poor
chick... Cute as hell, though.