Blood Lust: A Supernatural Horror (28 page)

I made myself comfortable in the balcony among a few love
-
frenzied
groping
teenage
couples
and tried to get some sleep. The constant screaming
on screen and moaning from the surrounding seats
kept waking me up. I gave up and got a cup of what might have been coffee from a vending machine in the hall. It tasted more like
week-old tea
, but it had
caffeine, which
I needed badly. I sat through t
wo
movies before hunger drove me
to
find an out
-o
f
-
the
-
way place to eat.
Comfortably seated in
a small diner two blocks from the cinema
, I
ate a hearty
, if greasy,
meal, possibly my last
supper
.

I
checked
my watch.
It was mid
-
afternoon
, a long time until dark.
I had
hours
to kill.
I walked
the
twelve blocks to my apartment
, pa
y
ing
little attention to the people I passed or to the storefront displays or even the mood of the people. My thoughts were jumbled and confused, filled with doubts and what ifs. As a detective, I prided myself on collecting facts and building a true picture of events. It amazed me how quickly I had accepted the idea of a vampire, only to have that concept whisked away and replaced by the equally preposterous idea of a centuries old intelligent creature that drank the blood of young women. Had not others witnessed such a creature, I would
have blamed
it
on
exhaustion and hallucination.

So far, I had been reacting as if the creature was merely another felon, albeit one of enormous strength and cunning, a man. I knew I must now slip the chains of logical thought, forgo my police training
and
let go of my lifelong concepts.
As a child, our mothers seek to comfort our fears with whispered assurances that no bogeymen live under the bed, no hobgoblins lurk in the closet, no monsters are hiding in the shadows.
But there are creatures in the shadows, creatures that have stalked man for its entire history safely ensconced in the blanket of man’s own reluctance to face the radically different. Better to label them myths, give them their own histories, their own legends,
and confuse
the truth with the lies. Better to live in blissful ignorance
than face reality
.

I had to put myself in this creature’s mind if I was to defeat it. As alien as it was, it still bore some kin to man
, had similar foi
bles
. It hated. It sought revenge. I could relate to such emotions, channel them to my advantage. Rather than react, I must act, boldly and decisively. I intended to free Joria and kill the creature, but if freeing her was impossible, I must strike hard and fast
with no regards to either of our lives
. The creature and its remaining offspring
must
die. My life or Joria’s was not worth the cost of failure.
The life of the city was at stake.

1
2

Trey Faber glanced briefly at the contents of the manila folder his assistant had handed him, removed his
turtle shell
glasses and rubbed the bridge of his nose where he could feel the onset of a migraine headache. He had foregone sleep for two days, living in his suit and grabbing a
stale sandwich
and
tasteless
ersatz coffee from the vending machines in the break room.
He knew he looked like
death warmed over
but no one around the office was crass enough
or foolish enough
to remind him.
He could
n
o
t complain. Most of his staff had been working the same grueling hours
as
he had, but then they did not have the President of the United States
and the
Joint
Chief
s
of Staff
breathing down their necks. He felt much older than
his
forty-two years and looked it
.
Even in the
polished
,
glass-like smoothness of his
mahogany
desk
top,
he
could not miss
the
prominent
black circles under his
hard blue
eyes
contrasting with the
pale pallor
of his narrow, tired face
. He looked away in
disdain.

Faber, head of a special branch of Homeland Security known as
Section
One
, closed his eyes a moment in quiet contemplation; then spoke to his secretary who always seemed to appear like magic whenever he had some task for her.
“Tell
Hays and Nelson
to
double up their
surveillance
of Hardin
.
He seems to have an affinity for finding these
creatures. We might as well use him
.”
He scanned a line in the report. “Add a team to follow Dr. Alvarez
. Her mysterious comings and goings worry me.”

His
secretary
, Helen Shapiro nodded curtly. He watched Helen walk away,
her
hips swaying provocatively, and tried to remember the last time he had been on a date. It seemed as if some lunatic or terrorist always managed to threaten the country whenever he had a weekend off.
Section One usually got the weird ones, but none had ever been as weird as this one.

Chupacabra
s vampiris
– the techs in the lab had already decided on a classification for the creature.
Until
two
years a
go,
Chupacabra
had been a myth with a thin file
in a drawer
beside the
likes of the
Jersey Devil and Sasquatch. Then, a routine check on a series of missing girls in Baltimore had turned up a Brazilian native, a cryptobiologist of all things, with a red dot on her temporary visa.
He had lost a man under mysterious circumstances while investigating the murders and had decided to tail the good doctor.
Now she was here, at his city’s doorstep.

Faber
had seen the bodies of the two juveniles in the lab.
Horrid creatures, they reminded him of gargoyles but the specialists had all agreed that the creatures drank blood like a vampire.
Even more surprising was the fact that, although they were dead (Hardin had done a good job on them) and beyond salvage, all of their organs were not.
Their h
eart
s
and a few
of
what appeared to be endocrine glands were busy repairing themselves at an alarming rate. Some of the creature’s stem cell
cultures developed from the tissue
had
successfully
repair
ed
nerve damage in rats.
The creatures’ ability to rejuvenate their own tissue had
some people in
Washington
very
excited. Faber was leery. He had read the files on the dead girls over the last fifteen years, over thirty of them. One creature had done that. Hardin had killed two young and claimed at least one more survived.

He smiled as he thought of Detective Thackery
H
ardin
. The man had style. He had made
Hays and Nelson
at the hotel and kicked in the passenger door. And he seemed to be a man who got things done. Normally, Faber admired that particular trait, but in this case
,
it was detrimental to the
Agency. Section
One
and Hardin were working at
cross-purposes
. Hardin was
on a one
-
man campaign
to eliminate the creatures and Section
One
needed a live
specimen
.

Helen
entered
his office with a worried expression on her face.

“What is it?”

“Hardin and the Alvarez woman have both disappeared.”

Faber
rose from his chair, leaned over his desk and looked Helen in the eye. He could not hide his annoyance.
“
Together?”

She shook her head.

“
What did
Hays
say
?”

“He reported that Hardin showed up at the hotel
, stayed a few minutes
and left without her.
Hays
made an inquiry and the concierge informed him that Hardin
had
demanded entry to
Alvarez’s
room but she was gone. He swears
no one saw
her leave.”

Faber clenched his fist. “Damn
Hays
! If he botched this …
Have
Owens follow
Hardin
as well
. We can’t lose them both.
And get those security tapes from the hotel. All of them.
”

Things were falling apart. First, Hardin slips his leash from Bledsoe,
and
then
Dr.
Alvarez disappears. Now
,
Hardin is on the run.
Faber tried to calm himself, think clearly.
One thing was certain. H
ardin
would go after the remaining creatures. Faber wasn’t as certain about
Dr.
Alvarez. Her involvement seemed to be more than
simply
scholarly. He still wasn’t satisfied with the
mystery
surrounding
her father’s death
or the agent in Baltimore
.
There were
still
a few
unanswered questions.
T
he incident in Baltimore had planted
s
eed
s
of doubt in his
mind
about Dr. Alvarez’s motives and intentions regarding the creatures
.
The agent had been following the
doctor
when he
had
disappeared.

Faber suspected Hardin would return to the
monastery
. He had encountered the creatures there twice. It seemed to be the creature’s lair. When they had recovered the two juvenile bodies, they had made a thorough search of the basement and had confirmed the presence of
a third egg
, but had not found the adult or the third juvenile.
If they wanted an intact specimen, they would have to beat Hardin
to it
.
Faber
picked up his phone.

“
Helen
,
dispatch
a recovery unit to the old
monastery
site.
Nothing lethal. Be certain they realize the importance of a successful hunt.”

Faber
hung up satisfied he had done all he could do for
the moment
. The rest would be up to the creature.

****

Clad Simmons eyed the profile of the old
monastery
and shook his head.
The
weathered cross sitting
sl
ightly askew
atop the tower
and
the
shadowed
profile of the buildings reminded him too much of a
mausoleum
.
He felt a sudden chill
, as if someone had stepped on his grave
.
He had been one of the crew that had had recovered the two
corpses
of the juvenile creatures
and
had
searched the basement for the adult. The entire time
they had prowled the
winding
bowels of the building,
he had felt eyes on him, as if the creature was there watching them
, waiting
. 

The creatures
’
eyes, though dead, had been the most horrible part
. Crimson red, they appeared
almost
demonic, like
ancient
drawings
of gargoyles
that
he had seen
in
old
books,
but they also looked as if intelligence had
once
resided
behind them.
He had not seen the girls’ mutilated bodies
;
the police had already removed them
by the time they had arrived
, but the pools of congealed blood were still plainly visible
marking where they had lain
.
The creatures were
a
deadly threat.