After Dark (The Vampire Next Door Book 2) (30 page)

“Okay,” Rick continued to lecture, “Now look, kids, there is a maniac on the streets.”

The boys moaned.

“And I don’t want anyone getting separated. Especially her. Do you hear me?”

“Hey,” Jimmy yapped. “How come she got that scarf on so tight?”

“Jimmy, shut up.”

“But—”

Laura began softly. “It was really my idea, I think.”

“Lady, you okay?” Charlie whispered.

“Shut up,” Rick barked. “You kids just been on the street too long. Now cool it, and just worry about Rufus, so we can find him. All right?”

“Hey.” It was Charlie. He was jumping up in the back seat to point. “Hey look it.”

“Who’s that?” Laura wondered out loud when she saw what he was staring at.

“That’s Bad Betty! She’s a hooker who knows everyone in town.”

“Who?” Laura almost never imagined such creatures existed outside of a bad television show.

“Yeah, that’s Bad Betty over there on that corner,” and now Jimmy saw her, “She’s the oldest and most experienced hooker around here. She taught a lot of girls the job. And some of us guys, too.”

“How old is this lady?” Laura asked. The oldest and most experienced hooker.

“She’s like thirty two, I think,” Charlie mumbled.

“Yeah, about that.” Jimmy said. “Most don’t make it that far, get beat up, stabbed, whatever, just disappear.”

“I wonder if the pimps find the idea of a serial killer convenient for whenever a girl’s body is found shredded to pieces in an alley,” Rick said sadly. “But then there are the street kids, and the homeless.”

“Shall we speak with this lady?” Laura suggested.

“Yeah, okay.” Rick pulled the car over.

“Betty, come over here, we need you!” Jimmy howled.

Betty eyed them all suspiciously. What was with this high class chick sitting next to the loser in the leather jacket? With those two idiots Charlie and Jimmy? Oh well, she didn’t care. It was just a job.

Jimmy leaned out of the car. “Hey Betty! You seen Rufus tonight?”

She was silent a moment, ran her purple tipped fingers through her mass of blonde hair, then spoke slowly, sounding physically and emotionally exhausted. “Nope. Haven’t seen him. But you know what? A guy went with me in his car to be under the bridge, right? And we had to go somewhere else ’cause there were these cops hanging around. They were towing away your truck. Sorry about that. It’s gone. Ain’t there no more.”

“Hey,” Charlie looked at Jimmy, “You know, what if he tried to walk back out there, all that distance, by himself, to be back at the truck, he left some of his stuff there. Maybe he’s there now, or on his way there.”

Rick hit the accelerator.

The dark cave that made up the space under the old bridge was coldly empty. The truck was gone, vanished as if it had never been. The only evidence of its existence was a dried up oil spot, food wrappers left over by the boys when they lived there, a few used condoms on the pavement from the prostitutes who used the area for their business, beer cans, a few used needles, bags of trash that had long ago been dumped.

Rick pulled up and put the car in park, killed the lights. He said nothing, listened intently to the sound of the cool night wind. Then he heard it. A stifled whimper. He dared not tell them. “Look, I’m going to have a look around. Stay here, okay you guys?”

“We wanna—”

“Stay where you are.” He jumped out of the convertible and rushed into the darkness under the bridge, alone.

The rail thin boy was held up against the stone wall by one huge paw-like hand that clutched his throat. He choked, grasped with frail white fingers against the claws that slowly strangled him.

“Hey, put that kid down!”

The beast turned to gaze coldly down at Rick. It was tall, built to appear almost apelike. “You.” It laughed quietly. “I’ve been wanting to get my hands on one of you for a long time.”

Rufus choked.

“I said drop him.”

The boy was thrown violently down as the beast rushed Rick with the force of a speeding locomotive.

“Hey, like you know,” Jimmy said to no one in particular. “Like, didn’t he like say that he can like hear everything that we can’t—?”

Laura looked into the dark pool of absolute darkness under the bridge and wondered. “Well, he certainly took off very quickly, didn’t he?”

“Yeah,” Charlie mumbled.

Laura did not bother to take the time to open the car door the way a properly brought up lady would. She gripped the edge of her skirt so it would not catch on anything as she leapt out of the Pontiac and landed with a click against the pavement in her Italian high heels.

“Hey, lady, where you goin’?”

She headed into the darkness just as Rufus was running out of it. “Jimmy, get in the front seat and turn the lights on so I can see in there.”

Rick was flat on the ground, large hands gripping his throat so that he could not make a sound. “All this shit probably won’t even kill you, will it?” The beast laughed. “No, but it obviously hurts you a whole lot, doesn’t it? I’m not worried. I saw plenty of scraps of wood in that pile of garbage, and some of them looked pretty sharp. I’m so glad to get a hold of you. I’ve always wanted to kill one of you. When I’m done getting rid of all the trash on the streets, then you’re all gonna be my next big project.”

Rick attempted to pull at hair but its hair had been cut extremely short. He dug his nails into the hands and found that the monster wore thin leather gloves. “Yeah, people kept getting suspicious about all the scratches. I have a lot of fun at this work, though.” Rick felt his head slammed against the concrete, then slammed again. He reached for the small handgun that was tucked in the beast’s pants, but the predator went for it first and threw it away behind him. “Too bad a gun makes too much noise.” Rick seized the opportunity when the creature took one hand off. He struggled and maneuvered out from under. Once again a hand reached out to take hold and pull him down but he swiftly managed to avoid it. He kicked at the monster’s face, but felt a grip on his boot—

A flash of light. An explosion. No, it was gunshot. His leg was released; he was still standing. The beast roared in furious rage. Another gunshot. It stood up, covered in its own blood. It rose up to its full height and charged.

More gunfire. Two shots. Then another. It was still staggering, trying to advance onto new found prey.

“Laura, get out of here!”

Another gun blast rang out in the night. Finally, the beast dropped onto the cold pavement in a pool of its own warm blood.

Rick looked down at the fallen beast of prey, now finally dead in the glare of the car’s headlights.

Carefully, Laura put the emptied gun down on the ground and stepped closer. “Why, it was only a man. Look. Just a normal, ordinary man.” A great, heavily built, powerfully strong man with an evil rage that only death alone could cease. She came closer and felt sick to see what she had done. The face was completely blown away, making the remains hard to identify.

The three boys came close to get a look at the bloodshed before them. Tears drifted slowly and silently down Rufus’ face. “He was tryin’ t’kill me. Said he would kill all the street trash.”

Rick pulled him close, wrapped an arm around the boy’s quivering shoulder. “What the hell you take off like that for?”

“Dunno. Just wanted to think about stuff. I was maybe gonna come back.” The boy sobbed into Rick’s leather jacket.

“Shit,” Jimmy said, “Look how big this guy is, like something from some Japanese monster movie.”

Rick looked at Laura. She stood by motionless in the glare of the Pontiac’s lights, looking down at the destruction she had just created. “We have to call someone,” he told her. “We should call Martin, he might be the only one we can trust right now.”

She nodded silently and went back to get her designer purse from the car seat and took out her cell phone.

A few nights later, the streets were safer, the general atmosphere was calmer. Word spread on the streets that the danger was finally over. There would be no more killing. The boys were still in front of the TV during the nights, watching rock videos, living as if it had never happened.

Martin came to the door late that night. He sat at Rick’s kitchen table and the boys ate Chinese food while sitting on the floor in front of the television. “Two guys I never saw around town before came when I called it in. We talked awhile. I told them what little I could; they told me they would take care of it. They said the gunshot wound to the face would make identification difficult, but damn it, I knew it was him the second I saw him on the ground. I didn’t recognize these two men, so I kept my mouth shut. I never said who I thought the body was. Why didn’t I see it before? The truth was right in front of me all along. I knew he could hurt someone, I saw him do it before. But I couldn’t admit it all to myself. I was in denial, maybe I wanted to be. In the office the next morning they make an announcement that McMurphy transferred without telling any of his friends good-bye. Bullcrap. People like him have no friends. The official story is that another poor homeless man was found under that bridge that night. That’s what’s in the paper. I keep looking around for answers, but I get none. You were right. I was wrong. I was just so wrong.” Martin put his head down into his quivering hands and leaned on the table. “I was just so wrong.”

“The trouble is over now, Martin,” Rick said. “I keep telling Laura that.” She was brewing herself and Martin some herbal tea. “She’s upset that she killed a man. But I keep telling her that she saved a lot of innocent lives. It would have kept up like that for years if she didn’t.” Rick knew he probably would have escaped only bruised after a struggle. But alone he would not have been able to stop him.

“Yeah,” Martin continued, “I saw a bottle of steroids at his desk once. He had been taking them. God knows for how long. He had always been so huge, almost didn’t seem normal when you looked at him. And he had a temper. He was out of control. I just didn’t realize how out of control. If there’s a cover up like what I’m seeing now, you can bet the people at the top knew about it, maybe even encouraged it all along, to clean up the town, clean out the drug addicts and the panhandlers. Maybe they knew and did nothing until he got sloppy, started to display his work all around town, an ego thing with him, I’m sure. Then they hire a phony psychic to make themselves look so concerned about the issue.” Finally he lifted his eyes and looked up at Rick directly. “There is so much corruption it makes me sick. And the worst part is, I can’t tell anyone what I know. What would happen to my kid? I have to now try and live with this and pretend to know nothing.”

Laura put the teacup in front of him and he thanked her. She sat down beside him. “What will you do?”

“Not much I can do. I’m alone on this. No one else cares about a few dead homeless people and street kids. I can’t do anything about this. I did do a little bit of thinking the past few days, though. I’m going to get my act together, maybe take some time off and look into starting my own business, become a private investigator. At least I could do my work honestly. I wouldn’t have to work next to a serial killer all day long.”

“Sounds great, Martin.” Rick whispered. “For your first job, why don’t you help me find that kid’s real father?” He pointed at Rufus, who was now staring at them both. “There’s something else about this lost street kid I just found out.” Rick gave a brief explanation, hoping the other boys would not hear everything. Martin finished his tea as he listened, agreed to look into it as soon as he could, and left.

“Well,” Laura sighed as she got up and put the teacups away, “I guess that solves the terrifying mystery of the serial killer.” She sounded as if she was echoing a bad line from a late night police drama.

“Hey, that don’t solve everything, lady!” Jimmy demanded over the noise of the rock videos.

“What d’you kids want now?” Rick moaned. “I buy you crappy Chinese food, I give you a roof, what the—”

“You didn’t finish the story about the medieval Russian guy!”

The party arrived at the small house that was hidden in the middle of the dark forest. It was the dim light just before the dawn. They arrived to see several ragged people, their children and their animals, and what was left of their meager belongings. Yuri came out of the house and took hold of Pavel’s horse. “The entire village has been burnt to the ground,” he said. “And these people have nowhere to hide. The soldiers will not pursue them here, for they believe this forest to be haunted by the spirits of the old gods.”

“It is.” He dismounted. “As you well know, my good friend.” The forest was indeed haunted by the old gods, and much more. “They shall stay here then, for what else is there for them to do?”

Yuri explained that what Pavel saw before him was all that was left of the village, that many people did not escape the swords and crossbows and torches of the soldiers who attacked in the dead of night. “Among those who are still living but did not escape, they took away the young unmarried women, and the children to sell as slaves, and killed all those who were unfit for work, the women who were with child, and old men. Many were burned in their own homes. These people were never told of why their homes were to be burned, but our lord need not explain himself, it is merely his will.”