Blood and Lace - Chapter 2

Time had gone soft again. Was it the same night? A different night? Had the years marched past as Della lay there, surrounded by the stink of mildew and rot? For a time she had retreated inward, stumbling through fragments of memory like a woman pursued. But there was no true escape. She couldn't push a pile of dreams across the path of her tormentor and get away. Drus was in her memories. He had already butchered her best dreams, one by one.

The return to consciousness was slow and dreary, like floating to the surface of an oil slick. Della could still feel the uneven loveseat beneath her. The sensation was joined by a new ache: hunger. It was hours past the hunt she had planned for tonight, maybe even close to sunrise. She thought Drus had placed her in an interior room without windows, but wasn’t sure. Did she care? She considered it…and realized she didn't.

There's a certain dignity in acceptance.

Her eyes had opened. That was also new. At some point Della had closed them, but now they were open again. She tried to blink, but her lids merely sagged, making the view blurry through her lashes. She made a mild effort and managed to raise them, but the blurriness remained. It wasn't her eyes. Something about the room was different.

The bare bulb was still on, but its once-harsh light had taken on a queasy green tint. Walls, doorways, and other sharp edges seemed softened, smudged. It was…smoke? There was a sweet scent at the back of her throat, just noticeable beneath the rot.

Della’s thoughts kept drifting. Had she been this fuzzy in the van with Drus? She didn’t think so. Her fear had been sharper before, the paralysis absolute. But now she could feel twitches in her fingers when she tried to move them, and the fear had become…unfocused. Like her thoughts. Gods…this fog smelled good. She managed to part her mouth and breathe deep. There was a delicious sliding sensation as her fangs extended, like she could quell her hunger from the air alone.

New noises intruded on her reverie. Footsteps shuffling toward her along the hall. She marshaled what little concentration she had just as a hunched man stumbled into the doorway. He wore nothing but rags, and the patches of visible skin were an unhealthy gray. At first Della thought he was a vagrant, possibly malnourished, but then the odor of dried blood and sickly need assailed her.

Feral.

The creature braced itself on the door frame, turning until it was in profile. Della could see the sunken forehead and distended jaws, and felt pure revulsion run through her. The feral opened its mouth to scent the air. Its fangs were so distended that the motion cut it's bottom lip. A sluggish black trickle ran down its chin and Della was forced to watch in fascinated disgust as its tongue slid out and licked at the ichor. To think that one of her kind could be reduced to…this. Instinctively she tried to turn away, but her head remained frozen. How ironic. Ferals didn’t hesitate to attack their own kind, and her stillness had kept her unnoticed. So far.

The feral took a hesitant step into the room. Its head lolled on its neck and it made a quiet groaning sound. She realized there was something wrong with it. Ferals were corrupt and fallen degenerates, but they were also dangerously fast. Once addiction had hollowed out a vampire’s mind, it became an instinctual, deadly hunter. But this specimen was slow and disoriented. It stumbled again as Della watched.

These pleasant-smelling fumes were putting all of them into a stupor. The fog…no, not fog. Some kind of gas. The thought was a bright splinter piercing the haze in her mind. She seized at it with desperate purpose. Why had Drus brought her here? What was about to happen? Suddenly she remembered his words.

The blood bags may be zealots…

Hunters! He intended her to be a victim of humans—another unspeakable indignity. 

Whether it was panic or will, Della managed to move a single foot off of the loveseat and set it on the floor. At the soft sound the feral turned. Its filmy eyes widened and its mouth opened into an unnaturally wide grin. It began emitting a hideous creak and it was several seconds before Della realized they were words.

“Heeeelloooo…gorgeoussss…” It took a single step toward her.

Please, gods—

The building shuddered. She heard a crash of splintering wood from below. The feral sucked in an uncertain breath, scenting the air again. Another crash and vibration. Sounds of movement. Even with muffled senses she could hear grunts of exertion, labored breathing, and boots pounding on hardwood. The sounds moved steadily closer. The feral swung about, confused. 

Then came the first death shriek.

It was a high-pitched howl that climbed the register for far longer than seemed sustainable before whooshing into silence. The sound all vampires made when the stake strikes true. Another followed the first in short order.

Multiple boots on the stairway now. Della wondered if she would hear herself make that chilling sound when it was her turn, or if consciousness was stopped with her heart. Creaking floorboards told her that two of the interlopers had reached this floor. The footsteps split. One set was heading down the hall towards this room. More were coming up from the floor below.

The feral staggered towards the doorway just as the hunter arrived. Della had been picturing a man in jeans and a leather jacket toting a wooden stake. The reality was far more shocking. He was a tall figure in a muted black uniform bristling with belts and pockets. A spare set of high-tech goggles was pushed up on his forehead, creating an alien silhouette. Even his mouth was covered. Instead of a stake he hefted an ugly tubular weapon—also black, but shiny like a carapace. 

He looked like an insect.

“Shit! Ghoul!”

The hunter grunted as the feral swiped at him with talons so large they had split the skin around its fingers. Della had been right, the feral was definitely weak. Instead of taking off an arm, the hunter had managed to block it…barely. The human eyes in his insect face looked scared.

Della could smell the hunter’s sweat and his adrenalin and his nervousness. She could smell his blood. A savage joy seized her. A desire to pay back the fear she had felt all night. She sent forth the Compulsion with an almost reflective ease, willing the man to stop struggling and let the feral cut him to ribbons.

Nothing happened.

A new panic blossomed inside her. Della could sense the man’s mind, but the Compulsion refused to seize it. She might as well have tried to move a granite block with smoke.

The man continued to struggle, slowly bringing his weapon to bear on the debased creature between them. Their contest culminated in a grisly stalemate. The feral reared back with its other arm and swiped forward, its limb blurring with something like its usual speed. The hunter never saw it. The talons bit deep and tore the man’s throat out with a spray of blood. In his death he fired his weapon.

Della heard a hiss of pneumatic air and the feral shuddered as its back erupted in multiple places. The creature was thrown backward onto Della, the force of it knocking the loveseat over. Della’s face hit the floor and pain exploded behind her eyes as the loveseat and feral both tumbled on top of her.

In the disorienting darkness, she listened to the sound of running boots and waited to die.

The leech was wearing a Spider-Man T-shirt.

It was sprawled in the downstairs hallway on its side, back shoved against the wall to keep the area clear, and it was wearing a perfectly ordinary pop culture tee. Nicholas stumbled to a halt, oddly transfixed by something so normal sharing space with the unnatural.

His—its—face was clenched in a wide-eyed rictus, lips parted in a silent scream brought on by the metal spike in its chest. A researcher had once told him that staked vampires really did scream, only so high that humans couldn't hear the frequency. At the time Nicholas had wondered if the man had been toying with him, but seeing the expression on this leech’s face...

“There a problem, Howell?”

Nicholas’s shoulders hunched upon hearing his section chief’s low tone directly behind him. He silently cursed himself for reacting.

“No sir,” he said.

“Good. Then take out the damn trash and keep the hallway clear.” He stepped past Nicholas and ducked through the doorway leading downstairs; the assault teams were still busy clearing the extensive basement.

Nicholas leaned down and heaved at the body, staggering into a fireman's carry. He tottered down the hall and towards the walled yard at the back of the decaying building. His sense of having entered a surreal alternate dimension intensified. Yesterday he hadn't even seen a vampire, just a set of bones carefully preserved from the rapid breakdown that usually occurred, and that still looked mostly human. Now he was carrying a dead leech over his shoulders, close enough to see the dried blood on the black talons that some of them had in place of fingernails. He suppressed a shudder.

And it’s not even dead yet.

The cool air outside was heaven, drying the sweat on his face and carrying away some of the stink of old blood and decay. A few hunters kept close watch by the rusted iron gate. One of them pointed to a cement patio next to the wall. In decades past it had probably hosted delicate wrought iron chairs and intimate get-togethers, or perhaps children's birthday parties. He dumped the body onto the pavement.

“Looks like you could use some more gym time, Nick,” said one of his guildmates. The woman with him laughed. Nicholas gave them the finger, but still waited to catch his breath.

Once all of the leeches had been collected they would start the fire. It was the best way. While a stake would immobilize one, only decapitation or flame would finish the job, and the latter offered the most convenience: all you had to do was wait a few minutes and then sweep all the red-hot stakes into an insulated container. There would be no fear of leaving behind evidence since vampires went up like Roman candles. Even if somebody saw the fire, all an investigator would be left with is a greasy black spot.

Nicholas made three more trips before the ground floor was cleared. By the last one he didn't even have the energy to flip-off his fellow hunters’ jibes. 

Now you get to do the same thing, only with stairs.

Suppressing a grimace, he re-entered the townhouse and made for the narrow twisting stairway. Halfway up he had to pause as the floor vibrated and plaster dust fluttered down like snowflakes. He guessed they were using explosives somewhere below, probably to clear a path. He continued up to the top.

There was another dead—almost dead, his mind corrected—leech in the bedroom overlooking the back yard. He briefly considered pushing it out the window, but decided that would likely get his ass chewed by the section chief. Making sure the stake was set, Nicholas began dragging it down the hallway. Going by the Gilda Devota classification system, its monstrous features and sunken eyes made it a “ghoul.” A very dry term for something out of a nightmare. Ghouls were vampires, but thought to be a more debased kind. Their researchers still weren’t sure if a regular vamp could become a ghoul, or if it was a different species altogether.

Nicholas continued dragging the leech down the stairs, telling himself they were too narrow to do it any other way. At the bottom, he finally hefted it onto his shoulders with a groan. He wasn’t going to be able to move come morning, but that was just a sign of success—they were putting up good numbers. The thought sparked a trickle of disquiet as he headed outside.

The operation was going great, it was true. At least five leeches about to meet the flame and only a single hunter casualty. Still, he couldn’t help but be troubled. So far the leeches had all seemed a bit…pathetic. It felt more like they were killing vermin than hunting monsters. He heaved the latest body on the pile and started back.

Chill. You're acting like every other know-it-all rookie on his first hunt. Stay focused. Nicholas shook his head at his own arrogance. They might look pathetic, but they were still vampires. Ferocious and able to control humans like puppets.

The only reason they’d done so well was careful planning and the liberal use of Compound-G. These leeches just seemed wretched because they’d been dosed. The aerosol version of G, dubbed “garlic breath,” not only helped inhibit their mind control, but made them lethargic and confused. 

And it’s mostly dissipated by now, so keep on-task.

Back upstairs, Nicholas moved in the opposite direction, following the hall towards the front of the house. He didn’t like it up here. The still air was oppressive. All the fighting had moved on, leaving only dusty boot prints and fresh gouges to mark the passage of previous hunters. He felt like a soldier from the distant past who’d been ordered onto a silent battlefield to retrieve the dead.

Then he saw the bloody handprints and gore coating the remaining doorway and had trouble thinking of anything else.