Paris After Dark

Rachel Chang pinched the cigarette between her lips and reached into her pocket for her lighter. Five years of being nicotine free was about to go up in smoke, if she could just get this damn thing to light. She flicked the Zippo and inhaled, then proceeded to choke. Eyes watering, Rachel flicked the cigarette onto the cobblestone as a high-pitched scream pierced the night.

One hand moved to where her weapon should be, while the other automatically reached for the St Michael medal around her neck. For a moment Rachel saw her partner lying in a puddle of blood. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath as the panic attack eased. This wasn’t New York. The vision wasn’t real. And this wasn’t her problem. Let someone else clean up the mess for a change.

A second scream followed the first, then ended abruptly. Rachel remained immobile, while her conscience called her every foul name in the book. Unfortunately, the voice in her head wasn’t loud enough to drown out the struggle she could hear taking place on the dimly lit road off Boulevard Raspail.

“You have no authority here. You don’t even speak French. Let the Parisian police handle it,” she muttered under her breath as she came upon a man grappling with a woman. The woman’s arms were flailing as she beat at the man’s broad shoulders with her clenched fists.

The dark-haired man wasn’t striking her back, but he was holding her tight to deflect her blows. It looked like a typical domestic dispute. Only a fool got in the middle of those. Rachel had been foolish once and it had cost her dearly.
Never again.
She shoved her hands in her pockets and kept walking.

Rachel saw a sign for the Cimetière du Montparnasse affixed to a high, grey brick wall. She glanced at the sky. “Trying to tell me something, partner?” Of course Paul Veretti didn’t answer. No one did. Like the residents of the fancy French cemetery, he was dead. All that was left of him was her memories and the St Michael medal around her neck.

The patron saint must have been on a coffee break the day her partner caught a bullet in the chest – a bullet that was meant for her. It was Rachel’s idea to answer the domestic battery call on the drive home. It wasn’t even part of their job. She should’ve been the one to stay in the house and try to calm the battered wife, not Paul. But he’d insisted she escort the husband outside and wait for a patrol car to pick him up. Rachel had barely made it to the porch, when the shot rang out. There was a shocked cry and a loud thump. She knew without looking what had happened. She felt like that bullet had been chasing her ever since.

Rachel glanced at the cemetery once more, then asked herself what Paul would do. The answer was obvious. She cursed, then tromped back to the mouth of the street. This was a bad idea. Her gun and NYPD badge currently resided an ocean away inside her captain’s desk. She’d have to count on the man fleeing when she confronted him. Rachel ran the odds of that happening in her head and let out a string of expletives.

The woman had stopped struggling and now hung loosely in the man’s arms. Had he struck her after Rachel left? She hated bullies. Hated people who thought their size gave them free rein to do as they pleased. The man stood in the shadows with his back to her, but Rachel could tell he outweighed her and the woman by a good fifty pounds.
This was such a bad idea.

“Hey buddy,” she shouted.

The dark-haired man didn’t acknowledge her, but Rachel saw his broad shoulders tense.

“Yeah, I’m talking to you.
Parlez-vous … anglais?
Let the woman go,” she said in frustration, wishing she’d paid attention to the French CDs she’d checked out of the library.

He slowly turned. Rachel caught a glimpse of shimmering green eyes, the colour so unnatural it couldn’t possibly be found outside the animal kingdom. Had to be contact lenses. But it wasn’t his eyes that held her in place. It was his teeth – his long, very bloody teeth.

Rachel watched the blood drip down his chin onto his dark suit before he stepped back into the shadows. What in the hell had he been doing? When she’d walked by earlier it had looked like the woman was the aggressor. She’d been wrong …
again.
How many people had to die for her to get it right?

She automatically catalogued the scene, so she could give her statement to the police later. He released the woman. She slumped to the ground like discarded rags. The man grinned, his attention now riveted on the new arrival.

Rachel knew that the fact she was a petite Chinese-American woman made her look like an easy target, but her size was deceptive. “Before you do anything stupid,” she said, knowing it was already too late for that, “I think you should know I’ve called the police. I’m placing you under citizen’s arrest.” She pointed to the sidewalk. “Get down on the ground.”

If the dark-haired man understood her, he didn’t let on. He kept approaching at a steady pace. The light should’ve revealed his face, but the shadows seemed to follow him, obscuring his pale features. It didn’t matter. Rachel was sure she could identify him from his eyes alone, although they didn’t seem as bright as they’d been moments ago. Must’ve been a trick of the light.

“Stay back,” she said. “This is your last warning.” Rachel held her hands up like her Krav Maga instructor taught her to do. It looked like a defensive posture. It wasn’t.

The man smiled, giving her an up close and personal look at his mouth. He had abnormally long incisors that had been filed into jagged points. He used his blood-covered tongue to caress them as he closed the distance between them.

Give an asshole prosthetic fangs and he thinks he’s a fucking vampire.

Rachel took a step back, a chill snaking down her spine. She didn’t dare look over her shoulder; he’d be on her before she could make it twenty yards. She needed to draw someone’s attention. The man must’ve read her mind because in a blink he went from ten feet away to in her face. Rachel didn’t have time to scream as he slammed her into the wall surrounding the cemetery. She landed with a sickening thud. The air rushed out of her lungs with a loud whoosh as pain shot through her body.

She blinked to clear her vision. The shadows still obscured his features. Rachel brushed at the darkness as he approached. He growled. She gagged as his coppery breath fanned out over her face. The guttural sound grew louder. It was the only warning she received.

Instinct made Rachel throw her hand up a second before his teeth clamped onto her forearm. Her leather jacket ripped as he tore through the thick material like it was made of butterfly wings. His sharp incisors punctured her skin. The excruciating pain snapped her out of her initial shock.

Rachel drove her palm into her attacker’s nose and heard something crunch, then saw blood splatter across his face. She wasn’t sure who was more surprised. Her hand came away covered in crimson. She swung again, but her slick palm only grazed his cheek.

Fury filled his glowing green eyes. The grip he had on her with his teeth tightened and he shook his head, shredding muscle. The human pit bull was going to break her arm, if she didn’t get him to release her.

Rachel hit his nose again, spilling more blood. He grabbed her arm, while his other hand latched on to her throat and began to squeeze. Blood roared in her ears as he tried to kill her. It was one thing to contemplate taking her own life, it was quite another to have him take it from her. Rachel thrust her hips forwards and kneed his groin hard. He grunted and released her arm, but the hand around her throat remained.

She tried to break the grip on her neck, using every technique she’d been taught at the police academy, but nothing worked. Rachel hit him until her palm hurt, then hit him some more. His nose was now bent at an odd angle and made a strange whistling snort every time he inhaled. She reached for his fingers and began prying them off one at a time as he tightened his hold. The chain on her neck sliced her skin, then Rachel felt the links snap.

“No,” she gritted out.

He didn’t respond to her plea. Instead, his head whipped around. He stared into the darkness, his gaze searching the shadows. Beyond the dark side street, the lights of Paris twinkled. One second he was strangling her and trying to rip her arm off, the next, he ran … taking her broken St Michael medal with him.

Rachel dropped to her knees, clutching her injured arm and coughing as she gulped air into her lungs. It took a second to remember the woman lying on the ground. She didn’t appear to be breathing. Rachel crawled to her and felt for a pulse. There wasn’t one.

“Damn it.”

She dragged herself to Boulevard Raspail and saw her attacker duck into a nearby building. He hadn’t gone far. Rachel had no doubt if he got away he’d be back on the streets in a few days to do the same thing to another woman.

She forced herself to her feet and stumbled down the sidewalk. Rachel gave a quick glance at the oncoming traffic and rushed across the road. Horns blared as the Parisian drivers narrowly missed her. No one braked. She pushed on until she reached a small park that butted up against the building she’d seen the man enter.

Rachel stepped over the low fence, keeping to the shadows. She couldn’t afford to let him catch her off guard. He’d done it once and it had nearly killed her. A tall wrought-iron fence ran alongside the green gothic-looking building that resembled an ornate shed. Rachel continued across the garden until she reached the end of the grass.

The wrought iron ended at a small gate, which squeaked in the cool evening breeze. A short nose of an entrance poked out of the front of the building. The door was covered in metal mesh. Or at least it had been. The mesh had been ripped away. She glanced down and saw a lock on the ground. It had been smashed. She hadn’t seen a weapon on him – with those teeth he didn’t need one. Yet he’d obviously been carrying something, unless he’d suddenly become a character out of a James Bond film.

Rachel knew she should call the police. It was the sensible thing to do, but by the time she found a phone, and someone who could understand her broken French, the killer would be long gone, along with Paul’s necklace. She couldn’t allow that to happen, even if all she managed to do was find his hiding place. Despite what the department shrinks thought, she didn’t have a death wish …
most days
.

She pushed the gate open. The metal screeched, announcing her arrival. He’d have to be deaf not to have heard her. Rachel cringed, but kept going until she could squeeze through. The light over the sign above the building had been smashed. Broken bits of bulb crunched under her shoes. The main door was open a crack, just enough for her to see the darkness beyond. Rachel turned back and grabbed the mangled lock. It wasn’t a perfect weapon, but at least it would aid her punches. Maybe she could manage to knock out his expensive dental work this time.

Rachel walked back to the door and inched it open. She tilted her head and listened. She could hear the soft fall of footsteps growing fainter by the second. He was getting away. She took a breath and stepped through the opening. The door slid shut behind her, extinguishing what little light had been cast.

She pulled out her lighter and flicked it on. There was a closed door on the left. It was flanked by a tiny archway that opened into a crude office, which lay empty except for a lone chair. Rachel raised the lighter and spotted a ramp, leading off to her right. There didn’t appear to be anywhere else he could’ve gone.

She shored up her courage and followed. Rachel stepped lightly, praying the sound wouldn’t carry. The ramp ended abruptly at a set of winding stairs. She couldn’t see the bottom.

What in the hell was this place?

Her arm ached and her neck began to sting, reminding her once more why she was here. Rachel flipped the lighter closed and began a slow, steady descent. Every twenty or so stairs she’d stop and listen. She couldn’t hear footsteps any longer, only the steady drip of water pinging off rock. The air had gone from fresh to stale.

Rachel was just about to call it quits and turn around, when the stairs ended abruptly. Did she dare use her lighter again? What if he was waiting in the shadows? Did she really have a choice? Rachel’s heart began to pound as she flicked on the lighter.

She was standing at the mouth of a tunnel. It appeared to be the only way she could go unless she wanted to climb the hundred or so stairs she’d just come down. If Rachel hadn’t been claustrophobic before, she would be now. The narrow tunnel had a low ceiling like the entrance of a tomb. She couldn’t stretch her arms out without hitting rock walls.

Rachel began walking. It was impossible to be quiet with loose gravel beneath her feet, so she left the lighter on. She stopped every few yards to listen. It was hard to hear anything over the pounding of her heart. The sound of water dripping grew louder. The tunnel eventually opened up into a larger chamber. Rachel read the sign above the door. It was written in French: ARRÊTE! ICI C’EST L’EMPIRE DES MORTS.

It was easy enough to translate: STOP! THIS IS THE EMPIRE OF THE DEAD.

“Terrific,” she murmured, half-expecting someone to cue horror music.