The Blind Vampire Hunter (19 page)

Isabella just answered sheepishly, “I guess I
just don’t know my own strength.” The show continued while Isabella
buried herself in her office to dig into the paperwork, always the
paperwork.

The way this night is going, I am so pleased
that this is a single movie billing night.

After closing down the theatre for the night,
it was time to go hunting, possibly because of the sight of blood
on the knife or the smell of the blood-soaked hand, it did not
matter. What mattered was that it made this girl hungrier than
usual for fresh blood, so the hunt was on.

Isabella was starving for a nice fresh
dinner. Maybe tonight she’d go bar hopping and with luck find a
meal that would take her home for dinner. In other words, she could
not bring her dinner to her domicile, her human-filled home, but to
her dinner’s home and the place of his/her demise. This was
definitely not a snack night. Tonight someone was going to die for
her dinner. Within her dinner’s domicile this could be more casual,
relaxing dining. If she played her cards right she could leave her
dinner remains behind without any clues as to who the killer
was.

Chapter
Sixteen

Christmas

It’s Christmas Eve and I have no choice but
to take the night off, the theatre is closed. If only I could have
gotten a chance to talk to management. I bet if
we would have
opened for business on Christmas, we would have had enough seasonal
losers to fill this theatre even on this so-called holy night.
Management had put out a memo a week before closing and then left
town for the holidays.

Isabella pondered.
With the Poisner house
all decked out for the holidays, and all the excitement of this
being baby Elian’s first Christmas, staying home was not an option.
Maybe I’ll go bar hopping in D.C. in an area that’s new to me, go
exploring for dinner. Very possibly I can find some lonesome meal
that will take me to his place for some nice quiet holiday dining.
I don’t mean a dinner of spiced eggnog and turkey, unless it’s a
human turkey.

When she left her room, it only proved her
point. The living room and dining room were gaudy with flashing and
non-flashing Christmas lights, bright, shiny Christmas decorations,
and cheerful foolery of all sorts.

When she saw that constantly moving Santa
Claus doll again in the window, it made her stomach turn.
I
can’t say which is, worse that constantly moving Santa doll, or the
moving doll of Dracula they had in the window for
Halloween.

Diana, seeing Isabella, interrupted her play
with Elaine and called out, “Isabella, you’re just in time to say
good-night to our little bundle of joy.”

“Good night Elaine, pleasant dreams.” When
she heard Isabella’s voice, Elaine, as always, responded with
wailing.
I should have known better. Maybe I could give that
“little bundle of joy’ a nice crib death for Christmas. Put her and
her constant screaming at the sound of my voice out of my misery.
Hmmm.

“Yep, time for bed. She must be getting over
tired.” As Diana happily rushed crying baby Elaine to bed saying
something to her about getting to bed so Santa can come, Isabella
pondered that her magic must not work on such a young mind. Seeing
that Jack was now the lone occupant of the couch, she noted that
Jack looked self absorbed.
Oh, yes. This is his first Christmas
without eyesight. The least said to him the better. I’ll just sneak
out while Diana is busy with the baby.

Once outside, she thought,
I can’t get
over how warm a Christmas it is, not unlike New Orleans. When I
relocated north, I was so looking forward to seeing a white
Christmas again. I haven’t seen a white Christmas since my time in
Europe. Well, I’ll go find some interesting Christmas
dining.

As she started heading for the metro, she saw
Eric.
I guess I’m going to have to be neighborly.

“Hi, Isabella. Merry Christmas,” Eric called
out from the front steps of his place.

He sounds drunk ... already.
I looked
past Eric into the living room window.
No Christmas tree, no
Christmas decorations at all ... odd.
“Eric, where’s your wife
and little boy?”

“Wife and my boy are with my mother-in-law,
or should I say mother-
out
-law.” With a laugh at his own bad
joke, he continued, “Ever since we got married, my wife goes to her
mother’s place to spend Christmas Eve sleeping in her old room so
she can spend Christmas morning, not to mention the rest of the
day, with her mother. Of course I’m not invited.”

“Yes, I remember you mentioning that you and
your mother-in-law don’t get along. She hates you for taking her
only daughter from her in marriage, correct?”

Shaking his head drunkenly, Eric answered,
“You got it. ...”

“But for Christmas? Have you even tried to
reconcile with your mother-in-law?”

“For my baby boy’s first Christmas, I
suggested to my sweet old mother-in-law that, for the baby’s sake,
we should bury the hatchet. You know what she said?”

“Can’t imagine.”

“She asked if I had a hatchet so she could
bury it into my head.” Eric paused to let that sink in.

Sounds like my type of woman.
She
fought off a grin.

“Please excuse my manners. Would you like
some heavily spiced eggnog?” He showed off the more than half empty
gallon plastic jug with the label “EGGNOG’ clearly in view. Eric
continued proudly, “I spiced it myself, I did.”

“No, thanks. It’s a little early for “spiced’
drinks for me,” she answered.

“Ah, yes, you don’t drink ... liquor.” Eric
drunkenly snickered.

Now
what did he mean by
that?

“So Miss Isabella Báthory. Who do you plan on
drinking tonight?” Eric drunkenly asked proudly puffing out his
chest, “Who do you plan on drinking tonight?”

She rushed up to Eric faster than any human
possibly could, and faster than anyone could have seen. Isabella
planted her face in front of Eric’s face, made
eye-to-blood-shot-eye contact with him, and enthralled him. “Eric,
you are too drunk to remember this conversation. You did not see me
tonight. Now go to sleep.” No sooner said than done. Eric collapsed
on the stoop and started snoring. Thinking that his poor wife must
be sleeping quieter tonight, Isabella picked up Eric as if he was a
child and carried him into the house. She walked around the living
room couch and dumped him on it. The jug of eggnog never left his
hand. She removed it from his grasp and placed it on the coffee
table. Looking at the jug she noted that not only did the sickly
light yellow contents look totally unappetizing, but she could not
begin to see how she could have even gotten the dreadful smelling
liquid past her nose. She could not decide what was worse, the
smell of eggs or the horrid smell of the cheap liquor within.

Looking back at him sleeping, she thought,
Eric, I really hope I heard you wrong. Heard you wrong twice,
but it’s unlikely
. Out loud she said, “It’s a good thing you’re
Jack’s best friend, or this night you would be my first Christmas
dinner after that remark you made. Despite being Jack’s best
friend, you just may have become a problem that I will have to deal
with.” That thought brought a slight pang of regret and loss over
dear Celeste. It turned out that Celeste wasn’t even missed enough
to be a problem for the police. It would seem that I was the only
one to miss sweet-tasting Celeste.

Just then Eric moved his head to the side
displaying his neck, almost daring her to take a bite out of him.
It was tempting, but Eric was not worth the chance of losing her
happy day respite. Besides, it was too early for such a
heavily-drunken dinner. She left to the unpleasant reverberation of
Eric’s snoring.

Once down in D.C., it was no problem finding
a pub open for the holidays. With her predatory heightened sense of
smell, all she had to do was follow her nose. With each block she
left behind, the scent of drunken sweat and strong liquor of a
local pub in full action got stronger until she came within glowing
lights that announced “Budweiser” and “Mil...” (Only part of that
sign was lit). It was interesting that the bar’s name ... American
Girl ... was not lit up. While it sounded busy, it did not sound
busy with Christmas joviality. Just the place to find a lonesome,
fresh Christmas dinner.

Noting how deadly quiet the rest of the block
was, she crossed the street and walked in. The atmosphere of stale
cigarette smoke made the place look like a London fog had floated
in. If the smell of stale cigarettes wasn’t bad enough, add to the
olfactory system the invasions of smells of various liquors
fighting among themselves, and then mix in the stink of unwashed
bodies, and morning applied deodorant that failed to survive the
night.

While fairly busy, the place was as quiet as
a graveyard except for the juke box playing some sad song she’d
never heard before and would have been happy not to be listening to
now. This was definitely the “Bah, Humbug” crowd. This was such a
group of losers that finding a nice Christmas dinner was going to
be like hunting for virgins in a nunnery. That brought back
memories of joy both fitting the Christmas night, while not fitting
a Christmas night. Hungry to the point of nearly starving to death
after escaping my castle prison, I stumbled onto a convent full of
nuns, an assembly full of virgin women, a feast fit for a starving
vampire. Only later did I ponder how my helpers failed to find such
a cache of virgin blood for my baths, but then, I only found this
secluded, out-of-the-way structure by misfortune. What a night of
screams and sweet crimson meals that night was.

She forced her mind back to the present.
Looking around, it appeared that she had her pick of two biker bums
with their own biker broad, or at another table there were three
street types who hardly looked old enough to be in a bar. At
another table was a suit with his tie hanging low and the top two
buttons of his shirt undone. He was displaying a tasty neck. Being
along, he was a good possibility, but being the suit type, he
probably had a nice apartment—possibly too nice, one with a doorman
who could give police a description of his last guest after she
left her dinner remains behind. She turned her attention on the
other possibilities. There were two men at the bar who looked
interesting. Both looked the type to be easily enticed sexually,
then she could toss in a little last minute fear of death for the
spicing. In the corner was a worn out looking whore who looked as
if she was more into drinking than looking for a john. “John”
reminded her of her short career as a street walker who was paid in
blood. The gothic outfits she used to dress in were so cliché. But
the hip, edgy outfits had made it easy to open negotiations for sex
for blood payments. Eventually, she even had returning customers
who did not even require her to “put out” for their blood. They
just got off by becoming blood donors, but one does get tired of
only snacking and not enjoying the fill of a full meal.

It was time to reel in that next full meal.
She decided to take a seat at the bar and see who took the bait
first.

“What’s your poison?” a tired bartender
asked.

“Poison?” Isabella asked.

“What do you want to drink?” the bartender
restated annoyingly.

“Bloody Mary.” She would not be drinking it,
but if things went well, she would not be around long enough for
the untouched drink to be an issue.

Just after the bar tender delivered her
fake-blood concoction, she heard, “Can I buy you a drink?” When she
turned toward the voice, it was the suit from the table.
It
didn’t take long for him to come over from his table. I would have
bet one of the other men sitting at the bar drinking would have
been the first to take the bait.

“I have one thank you.”
Let’s not look to
eager, play hard to get–a little.

“Yes, I see.” Sitting down next to her, he
continued, “Let me introduce myself. I’m Phil Bowman. Seller of
kitchen appliances. I have been here for some time now, and let’s
face it. This place is a real dump.”

Isabella noted the unfavorable reaction of
the comment from the barman working in earshot. He could not have
disagreed too much as he continued cleaning drinking glasses with
an unsavory looking rag, “I have much better wine at home than this
guy sells. Let’s go to my place, where we can enjoy a nice bottle
of wine and a warm fireplace...”

When he said that, he placed his hand on hers
and added, “Your hand is cold. You could use a nice warm fireplace.
I bet you’re from the south and not used to this northern weather,
even though it is unusually warm right now. Am I right?”

I’ll just smile a little and look back at
the drink I’m not drinking.
She deliberately hesitated in
answering.
Let’s play with this mouse a little.

“I have some real music at my place, from
Sinatra to Meatloaf.”

She just smiled to give him a feeling of a
possible victory to come.

“Look, lady, I have a bed that not only heats
but vibrates and can move like a real water bed. What do you say?”
A note of desperation was slipping into his voice.
If I don’t
reel him in some he might slip the hook.

“Do you have a doorman?” I asked
coquettishly.

“Well, no. My apartment is not that fancy.
But it did at one time, so I’m told.” Hope was slipping back into
his voice.

“How far is your apartment?” I was getting
ready to sink the hook in, like my husband taught me while
introducing me to his fishing hobby.

“It’s just three blocks around the corner.”
He was beginning to almost glow with the possibilities running
through his mind.