Dark Rain: 15 Short Tales (39 page)

The stairs were narrow and suspect.

I kept to the far edges, never stepping in the middle, and swept up them as quickly and quietly as I could. I wasn’t alone on the stairs. A

steady procession of faded entities appeared and vanished. These chambers and tunnels, hallways and stairs were easily the most haunted locations I’d ever seen.

No surprise there
. This was, after all, a human blood factory. A
death
factory.

At the upstairs landing, dim light spilled over the railing, illuminating a loft-like area filled with… crap. I stepped past shovels and filthy buckets and weird-looking glass containers. The scent of blood was everywhere. New blood. Old blood. My stomach growled.

Great.

I ignored the growling, hating myself all over again, but releasing the hate immediately. It was, after all, time to save my sister.

I stepped as lightly as I could through the mess, until I found myself at the balcony I had seen in my mental scan. Once there, I looked down at the scene below… and gasped. Human corpses filled the room. They hung from the rafters, many chained, although some suspended by thick ropes. All were naked. All hung upside down. All with slit throats.

My knees threatened to give. Hell, my whole world threatened to give. If I had to breathe, I would have been gasping. I probably would have fainted.

But I held onto the railing, searching the area below until I spotted my sister near the far wall. She was alive. Mercifully, she faced away from the carnage.

Some corpses twisted gently, as if blown by a breeze. A few of the freshest ones had buckets beneath them to catch the dripping blood. The men looked like local bums. One of them I was sure I recognized, a bum I had seen near the post office. Some of the women, if I had to guess, were career prostitutes. Banged up and used and abused. Some had fake breasts. Many still wore the remnants of makeup. All had their throats cut so bad, I could see all the way to their spines.

Many corpses were frozen in rigor mortis. Some had begun bloating. Most had been hanging for quite some time, the flesh having long ago peeled away from the ankles, revealing bone and rotting muscles. I counted twelve corpses. No, fourteen. There were two stacked on top of one other along the far wall.

If there was a hell, this was it.

A woman stood next to Chase. A woman I had seen in my scan of the room, but who had not been distinct enough to recognize. Well, I recognized her now. Detective Hanner of the Fullerton Police Department. A fellow investigator…a nd a fellow vampire.

Here at the blood factory.

I began removing my clothing.

I had to be careful.

These people had made a business of killing. An industry. They were good at it, and they knew how to get away with it, too. Especially with Detective Hanner on the force. Perhaps she influenced the reports. Redirected evidence. Controlled minds. Likely, all of the above.

I had to act fast. I had to surprise my opponents. And as I climbed up to stand carefully on the wooden railing overlooking the macabre scene, naked as the day as I was born, I suspected I would very much surprise them.

The single flame appeared in my thoughts. Unwavering, bright, dominant. I focused on it… and saw the creature within the flames. The creature that would be me.

And with that, I leaped from the railing.

The loft was thirty or so feet from the ground. Plenty of room to make my transformation.

Or so I hoped.

I spread my arms wide and, as the dirt floor rapidly approached, a huge set of thickly-membranous wings sprouted from my arms and legs. As I plummeted, they snapped taut and, instead of slamming into the floor, I swooped parallel to it, just a foot or two from the ground.

It was as if I had always been this giant winged monster. As if I had always had its instincts and talents and appendages.

As I rushed low over the ground, heads turned toward me. Faces formed into expressions of horror. Only one didn’t, that of Detective Hanner. My sister, mercifully, kept her head down, away from the horrific scene.

I tilted my right wing, angling to starboard and went first to the man in the near corner, hiding behind a stack of barrels that I could only assume contained blood. Clearly, the man had never seen a giant, humanoid vampire bat before. The first thing he did was wet himself. The urine seemed to burst from his loins, covering his crotch. The next thing he did was fumble for his crossbow, which he suddenly seemed to forget how to use.

He was still screaming as I slammed into him, driving him hard into the wall behind him. This was followed immediately by the
crack
of his skull bursting open.

Now covered in human chum, I spun around in time to see a silver arrow lodge deep in the wood to my side. Jesus, that was close. I followed its flight path to the second shooter, who had left his post against the far wall and was now sprinting toward me, pulling free another crossbow. Unlike the crude, medieval weapon the name evoked, this thing was fairly high-tech: laser-scoped, fiberglass, molded grips, and pistol-like trigger.

I leaped from behind the now-fallen barrels, flapped my wings hard, and rose into the air.

The second shooter was more brazen than the first. No spreading urine stains, as far as I could see. Dressed in actual camouflage, he charged me from across the spacious room, well away from the hanging corpses. As he ran, he leveled the crossbow and sighted along his scope.

Now, I can’t have that.

As the red laser briefly flashed across my eyes, I tucked a wing in, rolled in mid-air just as the silver-tipped bolt
whooshed
past me.

Close. The bastard strung another arrow, notching it as fast as he could. He was still in the act when my talons fastened around his head and pulled. He didn’t get very far off the ground before his neck snapped nicely, reverberating throughout the room.

I released his broken body, and spotted Robert Cash ducking out through a side door, when I caught sight of something else. Something winged and black and rocketing up from the ground below.

It was Hanner.

t was two days later, and I was in my office organizing my notes from a recent insurance case—and killing it on solitaire, as well—when I heard a rumble of bikes. Many bikes.

I glanced at Camry around my too-big computer monitor.

“You told him you were here?”

She glanced up from her cell phone. “No,” she said.

I waited as the rumbling intensified. By my guess, there were ten of them outside. I continued looking at her.

“Well, maybe,” she said.

“You thought it was a good idea to call the very guy you were on the run from?”

“I didn’t call him.” She rolled her eyes. “I texted him. Geez. Who
calls
anymore?”

“Get out,” I said.

For the first time all morning, she set her phone down. “Wait, what?”

“I said, ‘get out.’”

“But that’s
him
outside.”

“No thanks to you.”

A few stragglers pulled in. Twelve bikes total. Plus or minus one or two. And only one of me. I closed my solitaire game.

“Get out,” I said again.

“He’ll kill me.”

“I guess you could say you asked for it.”

“I thought you were going to protect me.”

“I can’t protect someone from their own stupidity.”

“Look, I’m sorry. He said he would…” She looked away and buried her face in her hands. “Hurt my sister if I didn’t tell him where I was.”

“No he didn’t.”

“Are you calling me a liar?”

“I am.”

I waited. From outside came muffled voices in between the sounds of sputtering Harleys.

“Okay, fine. I don’t have a sister. I guess you checked me out, right?”

“Get out.”

“Fine, I made a mistake. I miss him, okay?”

“Not okay. Get out.”

She sat forward on the couch, her knees together. She wore torn jeans that might have been bought that way. These days, who could tell for sure? The jeans were tucked into well-used Ugg boots. She glanced toward the unlocked office door.

“You can’t make me go out there.”

“I can and I will.”

“Oh, I see.” She sat back. “You’re scared. I should have figured. You heard the Harleys and got scared. You’re a chickenshit.”

“It was bound to happen,” I said. “Now get out.”

“I should have never come here.”

“I agree.”

“Steel Eye will kill you, too.”

“Or not.”

Someone gunned his Harley, and Camry jumped and squealed a little. She looked at her cell phone for no reason.

“Please don’t make me go out there. Please.”

“We’ve already been through this.”

Footsteps appeared on the exterior stairs that led up to my office. Heavy boots. Camry sat forward. “Oh God. Oh God.”

Harleys were still sputtering and grumbling. I heard laughter. Voices. Boots crunching. Mostly, I heard three or four sets of them coming up.

“Oh fuck,” she said, and to her credit, she looked pale as hell.

“You can say that again.”

The climbing boots were now moving along the outdoor hallway that led to the upstairs offices of which mine was proudly one.

“Steel Eye is crazy.”

“I’m sure he is, judging by your reaction.”