That Thing At the Zoo - 01 (5 page)

Nothing in this world is sadder than the cry of a baby. It reaches deep inside you and wraps its tiny fingers around your soul, making you instinctively
need
to help.

It started softly, hard to hear over the water running through the tunnel. Relentlessly it rose and fell, the loneliest sound in the universe. The world closed down around that cry. It rolled around me, plaintive and desperate. The baby needed, and the father in me rose up wanting to save it. All the while my blood ran cold through my veins.

Slowly I turned to look down the tunnel, vertebrae grinding against each other with tension. I traced the flashlight down until it shone on the pile of stuff the Nosferatu had been kneeling beside a moment ago.

The cries were coming from the pile.

Slowly, one foot in front of the other, I moved down the tunnel. It looked like a pile of rags spilling up the curved concrete wall. It was thick, different textures wadded together with scraps trailing around it. The flashlight quivered over it with each step closer. The baby cries began to get louder, becoming brittle and shrill.

I realized what I was looking at a moment before the smell assaulted me, punching me in the nose through the sewer gas.

Rot.

Rich and meaty rot so pungent it cut through the green gag of sewage. The pile of rags was made of the missing skins from the murdered animals. The light danced over the tawny brown of the lion, the black-on-white striped zebra hide, and the silver black of gorilla, all mottled with mold. Greenish black spots climbed up the pile. I stepped over, shining my light down into the hollow in the center.

Inside a tiny child threw up its tiny arm to block the light from its eyes.

My brain goggled at what I was looking at. The child had a pair of dirty blue shorts on, spindly legs curling out of the openings. Tiny brown hairs sprouted down the length where fur was coming in. The feet were swollen, toes growing extra knuckles and tiny black talons. It wasn’t wearing a shirt and its skin pulled taunt over thin bones, ribcage cut in sharp relief, spine jutting. The arm thrown over its eyes had a thin membrane wing stretching from wrist to ribs, covering its face like a caul.

Slowly the arm came down. Tentative. Wary. It dropped away to reveal a large round head that was smooth and cleanly bald. The ears had begun to change. They were pointed and moved up on the head. Over a miniscule mouth that made soft cooing noises the little button nose was just beginning to turn up. Eyes the size of its fists blinked slowly up at me, the pupils large and black like the eyes of a bunny rabbit. We stared at each other. He was fragile and cute, so cute he didn’t even look real. Helpless in a nest made by his mother …

STOP
!

What the hell was wrong with me?

The second I thought it, I felt it. My power prickled to life and I sensed the corrupted yellow magick radiating off the tiny Nosferatu, pulling at my father instinct.

There is a saying about babies. They are created so cute and adorable to keep you from killing them when they drive you insane. This baby had that in perverted, evil spades. It was a monster and would grow into the thing I had killed at the other end of this tunnel. Raising my gun I squeezed the trigger.

Nothing happened.

Damned sewer gas! I forgot to reload! Dammit!

The little Nosferatu frowned at me, the lower lip poked out and then pulled down to reveal a mouthful of tiny, needle-sharp fangs. Those big blinking eyes glared up at me. Crimson boiled into the corners as they began to glow. It rose up, crouching on those swollen feet and spindly legs, staring at me. Its eyes filled with a satanic red glow, casting shadows under its cheekbones. Its face was a mouth full of razors, laser-beam eyes, and a giant skull. Everything else fell away into shadow.

I dropped the flash light and it bounced on the ground, tossing light wildly until it rattled still. The light stayed on, reflecting off the water and the concrete, throwing a dim halo of blue-tinged light. My fingers fumbled with a clip.

It was still rattling in my hand when the little bastard launched itself at my throat with a hellish shreik.

Swinging the hand holding the clip, I backhanded it. Tiny talons dug in as the baby bloodsucker latched onto my arm. It hung, wrapped around my fist, screaming at me, its little pug nose scrunched over deadly razor mouth. Pain sharp and abrupt followed it as the little demon lurched up my arm, digging hand- and toe-holds in my skin with its talons. I shook my arm, trying to dislodge it, sling it off, hurl it away from me. Its little winged arms wrapped around my bicep, squeezing tight, tourniqueting the arm, making my fingertips go numb. The tiny bastard was still inhumanly strong. Lines creased its cheeks as the mouth distended, jaw dislocating like a viper’s.

It struck in a blur, round baby head bobbing down, petite fangs sinking deep. The muscle of my shoulder was swollen with blood from its tourniquet hold. Needle teeth cut deep, burning and searing. The bloodsucker’s jaw worked, chewing into my arm. It felt like acid was running under my skin, up my arm, into my throat. Everything swam in my head. The Desert Eagle dropped from my hand, clattering on the concrete floor. My knees hit the floor next to it. Hard. The jolt ran up my body, rattling my teeth.

My head cleared for a split second.

It was all I needed.

My empty hand dragged out the cross and medal hanging around my neck under my shirt. They lit up as they cleared the cloth. Clean holy light washed over me. The little demon eating my arm whimpered in protest and tried to slide his body away from the light, deadly mouth still locked in my flesh. The pressure in my shoulder let go as his grip loosened. My fingers dug in, grabbing a spindly leg and peeling him away.

The baby vamp tried to hold on, but I was determined to get him the hell off me. I had a firm grasp on the leg, wrenching it away from me. The claws furrowed through my skin, leaving thin ribbons of cuts. Still, I yanked until I had it free except for the mouth and one arm. Its tiny body stretched from my arm to my hand. It was like a leech or a tick. Clamped on, dug in, and not letting go.

The teeth came away in a screech of protest, a gush of blood, and the loss of a small mouthful of my flesh.

The baby Nosferatu screamed and cried, pulling with the arm still, snapping at the air with a bloody mouth full of murder. I gave a heave, yanking from deepest part of my gut to tear it off. It dangled in the air, held tight by my fist around its leg.

Whirling it around I smashed it against the concrete and stumbled up to my feet. The bloodsucker bounced and skidded a few feet. Tumbling and rolling to a stop, it got its feet under itself. Those big cartoon eyes turned up at me, limpid pools of hate and hunger glowing scarlet. It crouched, gathering itself to leap, and snarled at me. A high-pitched scream tore from it as leaped in a blur. Talons out, fangs flashing, it flew for my throat.

The silver bullet took its head apart in midair.

My hand hurt from firing my back-up gun. The snub-nose .44 magnum revolver had a helluva kick. I stepped over to the baby Nosferatu. It sprawled, top of its head gone, evil mouth still biting slowly. My finger twitched over and over, emptying the cylinder of bullets into the vampire. The little bastard bloodsucker turned to dust before the hammer clicked empty.

I stood swaying, watching the water wash it away like its vampire mother. A deep breath sent me into a coughing fit, lungs burning and my throat on fire. I picked up my Desert Eagle and the flashlight and started moving down the tunnel.

It was time to get the fuck out of this hellhole.

Polecats was busy as hell. Girls dancing on poles, spinning like angels, and swaying on stages and tables like succubi. Men throwing money at them like rigged slot machines. The air was heavy with a haze of cigarette smoke, perfume, bullshit, and rock ’n’ roll.

I sat at my table in the back by the DJ’s booth. It was the quietest place on the floor; all the speakers that belted out rock, country, and blues were facing toward the rest of the club, and I’d had the booth built with floor-to-ceiling walls thick with insulation. You could talk in my booth without yelling into someone’s ear.

Jimmy the zookeeper sat across from me, all dressed up for a night out on the town. Mullet gelled to perfection, he was wearing a button-up shirt and a dark pair of jeans. The only thing out of place was the line of stitches over his right eyebrow where the Nosferatu had smacked him. He was nursing a longneck beer and watching Cinnamon on stage a few feet away. Cinnamon was her real name. No customers believed her when she told them so she went with it.

She was worth watching, a skimpy gold bikini and a short tasseled belt accentuated the roll of her hips and the sway of everything else. It looked good against her mocha skin. She was a sweet girl and a good dancer, which is what got her kidnapped by a cult that worshiped Ishtar. They were planning on hollowing her out and filling her with the essence of Ishtar.

I had put a stop to that, so now she danced at my club safe and sound.

I picked up my Red-Headed Slut, the most delicious adult beverage in the world. “How are things at the zoo?”

“Fine, fine.” It took him a minute to look my way instead of at the stage. “Dr. Critter was named director last week and he replaced the lion and the zebra without cutting anybody’s hours.”

“Not the gorilla?”

“Nahhhhh. We got enough of them and they breed like monkeys.”

Critter had been hospitalized with “severe spontaneous neck trauma,” but had made a full recovery. Mr. Beauregard wasn’t so lucky. He had died. The Nosferatu had apparently shared blood with him because, by the time I had gotten back from killing the Nosferatu and her demonspawn, his body had already started to mutate. I’d had to stake his heart and cut off his head to keep him from turning into a vampire.

Kat had done some research and discovered that a Nosferatu female finds a child and turns it. Nosferatu blood then mutates the child, changing it into a mini Nosferatu. The vampire will raise the hellspawn child as it continues to grow and become a full-fledged Nosferatu itself. Most vampires lock into their age when they are turned; Nosferatu are apparently different. Vampire biology is a whacked out, unnatural thing.

Detective Longyard discovered that a family of tourists, from Transylvania of all places, had gone missing on Tuesday. It was the day they were scheduled to visit the zoo and the day there was not an animal carcass taken. The mother and the father were found in the sewers. They had been skinned and were not far from the nest. The body of their son, age two, was never recovered. It had washed away in the sewer.

Jimmy took another pull from his longneck then sat it on the table between us. “I want to say thanks.”

“You already did.”

“Still …”

I waved him off. “It’s cool. It’s what I do. No big deal.” I tossed back my drink, draining the short glass to just the ice cubes. “Let me get you another beer and I’ll get Cinnamon over to keep you company. She’s a nice girl and needs a good guy in her life. I think you two might get along.”

His hands moved to smooth down his shirt, then feathered back along his hair. “That would be real cool, man.”

Smiling, I slid out of the booth and made my way to the bar.

He lives to kill monsters. He keeps his city safe. And his silver hollow-points and back-from-the-dead abilities help him take out any kind of supernatural threat. But now an immortal evil has this bad-ass bounty hunter dead in its sights …

Ever since a monster murdered his family Deacon Chalk hunts any creature that preys on the innocent. So when a pretty vampire girl “hires” him to eliminate a fellow slayer, Deacon goes to warn him—and barely escapes a vampire ambush.
Now he’s got a way-inexperienced newbie hunter to protect and everything from bloodsuckers to cursed immortals on his trail. There’s also a malevolent force controlling the living and the undead, hellbent on turning Deacon’s greatest loss into the one weapon that could destroy him …

Don’t miss James Tuck’s
BLOOD AND BULLETS
coming in February 2012!

Some nights are destined to go to hell. Not literally, at least not usually. From the start of them, you know they are going to turn on you like a rabid dog. I was having one of those nights.

Which is why I found myself with a semiautomatic pistol aimed at a vampire who wore my daughter’s face. My eyes were fixed on the laser dot that screamed red against her forehead, but my mind was racing back through memories of my little girl. The pain was a surgical strike. It was inside before I could close my guard. So quick and clean that I didn’t feel it until scalpel hit bone.

Memories of her, along with my wife and son, are acid-etched in my mind. It has been five years since they were killed, stolen from my life by a monster. Their deaths had started me on the road I am on now: hunting monsters for money until the day I run up on one that is nasty enough to take me out so I can go be with them. Their deaths burn in the wound where my heart once was—ugly, venomous, and cruel.

I keep all of that locked tight just so I can function and move through each day. Now this vampire girl looked like my daughter and all the pain was rushing back through my mind like a flood of boiling water.

Some small movement on her part clicked me back to the present. I studied her through narrow eyes. She had the same thick blond hair, although the vampire’s hadn’t seen the business end of a brush in a long time. The same wide, blue–gray eyes and dash of freckles scattered across her nose. Different lips, although this vampire’s lips still looked made for laughing, not drinking blood.

She was similar to my daughter, but not the same. Cut from the same cloth, she would look like a part of the family. A niece, a cousin maybe, but she was not my daughter’s twin. I blinked and stared to make sure. The resemblance had triggered those deep buried memories, but that was all it was. Fucking memories. The breath I had been holding pushed out of my lungs and I began willing my heart to slow its turbo-charged pounding. Sweat bathed my palm, making my skin oily and slick against the grip of my gun. I had no way to measure how long I had been lost in my own trauma. A moment. Maybe two.

It happens. I’ll be fine for a while and then suddenly, from nowhere, a random thing will smash my world askew and I’ll be back to the pain of losing them. I get a bit jumpy when that happens and do things like pull out my gun. Stepping back, I kept it pointed at the vampire. Her wide eyes were focused on the barrel.

They should have been, it’s an impressive gun. Desert Eagle .357 Magnum. It has black finish and ten heavy-grain, silver-jacketed bullets, if you are willing to keep one in the chamber.

I always have one in the chamber.

Damn thing weighs almost five pounds fully loaded. However, it will put a softball-size hole in even the toughest vampire, or any other bogeyman I run into in my line of work. Vampires are monsters, even if their packaging looks like an innocent fifteen-year-old girl. You don’t play games with them. You kill them or you leave them the hell alone. The red laser dot stayed on her forehead as I took another step back, increasing the distance between us. I was back on the job.

I had just come out of Polecats, the strip club I own and work from, to find this vampire leaning against my car. I don’t like humans leaning on my car, but a vampire? Oh, hell no. She is a fully restored 1966 Mercury Comet and she deserves better than that. This vampire had called out my name.

Oh yeah, I’m Deacon Chalk, occult bounty hunter, sometimes vampire slayer.

This should be interesting.

“Stay right there and tell me what you want.”

She did not move except to tilt her head sideways, regarding me like a snake does a wounded bird on the ground. “I want you to protect me from the Nyteblade.” Thin arms held out the flat package in her hands. It was a manila envelope. “I have information here to help you find him.” She looked earnestly at me in the sodium light. Small white teeth bit her bottom lip and she had the good grace to keep her fangs sheathed. The effect was scared little girl and it pulled to that non-logic place inside me again. “There is money in here. I know you get paid to protect people from monsters. I want to hire you.”

What?

Wait.

The vampire wanted to
hire
me?

I have had vampires try to kill me, and I have had them run from me, but I have never, ever had one try to hire me. It went against my one and only rule.

“I don’t work for monsters. I kill them.”

That thick mess of hair hung low around her face in what looked like shame. Her voice was quiet. “You know I am a vampire? How?”

“It’s my job to know.” And that was true. Most normal people would think she was strange since she was barefoot and barearmed in a summer dress when it was deep Georgia fall. It wasn’t cold enough to think too much about it, but it was a pretty cool night. Jacket weather. So her wearing just a sundress was weird, but not a reason to be alarmed.

I knew what she was because she was just
off
. Moving either just a bit too fast to be human or stopping a bit too still like only the undead can. The thing that unmistakably marked her as a vampire was the smell. Vampires smell like big snakes, all venom and shed skin. I don’t know why, but they do. And a little like roasted almonds.

Heat began to build in the muscles of my neck and shoulders. Widening my stance, I shifted the angle I held the gun at. You can’t hold any gun, much less mine, for very long in one position. You have to keep moving around or your muscles fatigue pretty quickly. The problem with moving around is it’s not conducive to shooting your target. A target like the vampire standing in front of you.

“So, exactly what is a ‘Nyteblade’?”

She swayed in the sullen, sodium lighting of the parking lot. Back and forth, back and forth, over and over, just slightly back and forth. The manila envelope slipped completely from thin fingers, spinning to fall at her bare feet. Narrow shoulders hunched, drawing her chin down to her chest like an owl, and she wrapped both slender arms around herself. A fine tremble raised tendons to stand in stark relief against her skin like steel cables.

This vampire chick was really freaking me out. I know vampires, and they don’t act like this. They are usually either an oil-slick smooth, diabolical predator or a bloodthirsty, slaughterous, vicious predator. What they did
not
act like were scared, little-girl, meth addicts. My whistle made her skin jump. She didn’t look at me, but it got her attention.

“Again,
what
is a Nyteblade?”

The voice that answered was a strangled whisper from inside the tangled veil of her hair. “He is a monster. A hunter of vampires.” Her weak mewl faltered, the words coming in halts and stops. “He is an agent of destruction.” Her body was now shaking so bad it caused her teeth to rattle. My grip was tight on the Desert Eagle. Whistling again, I tried to derail her breakdown. “Please help me,” she squeezed out. “I
have
to convince you.” Her hands wrung together, bones clickety-clacking against each other. Hair along my arms began to stand on end.

A tiny move of my finger pulled the Desert Eagle’s trigger to the break; another twitch would plant a bullet in her skull.

Nappy blond hair whipped as her head turned in my direction again. It was a jerky, too-fast-to-be-human movement. Those big eyes of hers were glazed over, chin waggling as her mouth hung open. She looked like someone who was listening to music no one else could hear. I felt the air snap as her attention came back to me. It made the skin on the back of my scalp tighten. In a breath of a moment, I watched black pupils dilate to cover the entire iris. Blood pooled from the corners of her eyes, turning the whites crimson. Muscles in her cheeks and neck knotted, distending her jaw and making fangs slide out of her gums wetly. She was still like that for the length of a thought. Then she
moved
. With a flash of yellow dress and chalk-white limbs, she leaped in the air toward me.

My finger squeezed the trigger that last fraction of an inch and a silver bullet spat across her hip while she was in midair. Black gore burst out and hung in space for a moment before splattering like rain on the asphalt. The impact canted her sideways in mid-leap, so instead of hitting me with fangs and claws, she windmilled past, slamming into the pavement. Bones rattled against the asphalt with a staccato beat.

Tracking the laser to the center of her chest, I squeezed the trigger twice. The recoil jolted up my arm and her chest exploded, more gore blossoming in inky wet flowers. It took the fight right out of her.

First rule of killing vampires: Take the heart and take the head. If you do that, then they are dead. My bullets are modified silver hollowpoints, wax sealed with silver nitrate in the tips. Most things otherworldly have weakness to silver. They are manufactured by Orion Outfitters, a company that provides items specifically for what people like me do. Looking down, I could see inside the gaping hole in her chest. The edges running black as the silver poisoning took effect. Heart taken care of?

Check.

My left hand pulled the phone off of my belt and flipped it open. If she was a recently turned vampire, then she was someone’s missing daughter and maybe on a child watch list. If not, then maybe she would be in the database of bloodsuckers and I could find information about her. Maybe even why she tried to hire me and then freaked out and attacked me. The phone was silent as it snapped a picture of her face. Gore from the chest wound covered her collarbones and throat like a turtleneck, but left her face clean, calm, and smooth. The trauma of the bullet wounds had put her in a near-catatonic state. If I left her and she could find cover from the sun in the morning, she would be able to heal even this much damage. Vampires are like that. Because they are dead, they are really, really hard to kill. It took almost no movement to bring the red dot to the bridge of her nose.

Those big blue–gray eyes fluttered closed one last time just before I pulled the trigger.

I stamped my boots to shake dust off them. That is one good thing about bloodsuckers, they don’t leave much behind to clean up. This one was fairly young, so she
crumbled
into dust instead of
exploding
into dust, but she was still just a pile of dust and a thin yellow sundress full of holes. Even her blood and viscera turned to dust when she did. I still had a nag in my conscience because she was so young when she was turned. I knew she was a vampire. A monster. Hell, she had attacked me, but that non-logic place in me still twinged at killing a young girl. Scooping up the manila envelope and shaking it off, I opened the car door and got in the Comet.

Opening it, I found a file folder with what looked to be a series of hand-scrawled notes and grainy pictures. Approximately $20,000 in rubber-banded bundles of $100 bills fell out in my lap. I put the money in the glove compartment and tucked the folder into the seat beside me.

So she had actually been trying to hire me. Weird. Now I know about weird, but even for me this was a first. The engine of the Comet roared to life as I turned the key. In my world, nights that started strange usually crash-landed in the town of Fucked-Upville before they were said and done.

The stereo kicked in with the winsome sound of a dark guitar run. John Lee Hooker started singing about a long night full of danger. Dropping the Comet into Drive, chain-link steering wheel sliding coolly under my fingers, I moved out into the night to see if John Lee knew what the hell he was talking about.