Blood Lust: A Supernatural Horror (12 page)

“I almost dropped you,” Lew said in a deadpan voice that
belied
his anxiety. I knew he meant it.

“Glad you didn’t,” I said as I
stood and
massaged my aching shoulder
, willing the pain to subside
. “Looks like our killer perched here.”

He nodded. “This guy bothers me more and more.”

“The papers will crucify us over this one. Sasha Sattersby was one of their darling bad girls. She sold papers and
TV ads
.
We’re going to be under careful scrutiny.
They’ll watch us 24/7 and any mistake
we make
will
either make the front page or be
seen by
a few hundred thousand
viewers
.”

Lew came to the real point. “It’s the captain I’m worried about.”

H
is concern was valid
. In spite of his constant haranguing, Captain Bledsoe had covered our asses on more than one occasion. The suits upstairs were breathing down our necks on this one and if we blew it, the captain, and we, might be walking a beat down in the hooker district, a
thoroughly
unappetizing prospect.

Lew glanced out over the roofs at the old Jesuit monastery.
It often amazed me how alike our minds worked.
“You don’t think…”

I shook my head slowly. “Nothing about this one makes any sense. A normal psychopath wouldn’t
return
to the church, but this guy
,” I shrugged, “w
ho knows?”

“Maybe we should
take
a chopper with us
this time
in case this guy goes through the roof, literally.”

I liked the way Lew was thinking, but our killer would hear a
hel
i
copter
a mile away. Besides, I suspected he would lay low in the daylight. He seemed to
prefer
the cover of darkness
to commit his crimes
.

“No, I think just you and me tonight.”

He looked at me with an unspoken question. I anticipated it.

“Too many people and he’ll bolt. Just you and me … we might catch him with his pants down.”

Lew
grimaced, reading more into my comment than I had intended. He
remained
unconvinced. “No backup?”

His terseness communicated his
feelings
that
having
no back up would be foolish. He
could be right
. We had
blown it
once
already
. Twice and we would look like fools.
I relented.
“
Okay, w
e’ll place some uniforms outside the perimeter.
There’s n
o moon tonight until four a.m. If they can keep quiet and out of sight, we just might pull it off.”

“If he’s not there, we’re going to look stupid,” Lew reminded me.

A rush of anger surged through me, as well as a bit of my stubbornness. “We’re going to get crucified no matter what we do. I’d rather go down following my gut instinct than playing it safe and spending two useless days interrogating witnesses.”

Lew shrugged his shoulders. “I’m game.”

* * * *

Ella Ramirez sat in the passenger side of the white WBBT 7 news van looking up at the Sattersby apartment, fuming with anger. They had arrived on the scene before all the other news crews, for all the good it had done her. She had attempted to gain access to the apartment with her cameraman, Steve Capaldi, but the police had not so politely turned them away. Then, some detective had appeared and forced all the reporters, including her, across the street where they could barely get a decent shot of the proceedings.

“Sasha Sattersby is big news,” she complained to Capaldi as he scanned the street with his camera. “This story will make national headlines. We need something good.”

Capaldi lowered
his Sony XDCam
and looked over at her. “We’ve got footage of her various public brawls and drunken appearances at charity events,” he reminded her.

“Oh, we’ll use those, but we need something better, something juicy. Sasha Sattersby is the fourth girl gone missing this week. People are frightened by this Midnight Monster character.”

Capaldi smiled at her as she said the name. “That was quick thinking,” he said.

She had coined it seconds before an on-air broadcast and the other stations and newspapers had picked it up. She returned his smile and continued, “Scared people buy newspapers and watch the news. Footage of police lines and detectives going back and forth are no good. There’s no drama.”

“What about this?” Capaldi asked her, pointing the camera out of the window and upwards toward the roof. She craned her neck to follow the camera. Two men stood at the edge of the roof. As she watched, one man climbed down onto a gargoyle while the other held onto his hand. He stooped and examined the gargoyle, and after a few dizzying minutes, he clambered back up. She couldn’t see what he was doing.

“It’s that detective,” she said. “What is he doing?”

Capaldi set aside his camera, skimmed through his notebook and grinned. “Thackery Hardin is the detective assigned to the case. I’ve heard of him. He’s a real hard ass. The big guy is Lew Attwood, his partner.”

Ella
smiled. “We need to keep an eye on Mr. Hardin. He’s the key to this.”

“He’s not going to like it,” Capaldi pointed out.

“We’ll be discrete. We can’t get a shot or even a description of this Midnight Monster, so we’ll make Detective Hardin the news; use his face.”

Capaldi chuckled. “He’s going to shoot us.”

“You leave him to me,” she said in her most charming voice. “I know how to deal with the likes of Detective Hardin.”

* * * *

Night was still a long way off. I could
n’t
ignore the possibility that our killer was a member of one of the loosely organized vampire cults that thrived in the dark alleyways and dimly lit, pounding heavy metal Goth clubs in the city. I knew of a small shop on Second Street that advertized vampire paraphernalia – clothing, false vampire fangs, make up, etc. It was a
good
place to start.

When
Lew
parked
his SUV
outside
the shop
,
I
stared
out the window at the parade of ghost-faced
punks and Goths
dressed in funeral black and wearing dark eye shadow walking like shadows themselves, and I wondered where we as a society had gone wrong. How could a
fourteen or fifteen year old kid be so turned off by life that he or she could see no future through the gloom? On first thought, seeking refuge in a fantasy world like vampires seemed like a built in excuse for failure to me, but then I remembered groups like the Masons and the Elks or the Moose Lodge. How were they any different? Their members played fantasy roles for fellowship and the
perquisites
that came with that fellowship, just like the Goths and the vampires. Maybe the fabric of society as a whole was fraying around the edges. Pack too many people in a concrete and steel box, toss in extremes of wealth and poverty and add a dash of racial tensions and religious differences and you had quite a volatile mixture. Today’s youth want to be vampires and live forever, while my generation dodged Iraqi bullets and IEDs and just wanted to live out the day.

Entering the store, I confronted the purple-haired punk behind the counter wearing a black
Nosferatu
t-shirt and black pants
with a
dozen piercings through his ears, nose and cheeks. He looked like someone had peppered his face with a shotgun loaded with metal filings.

“Detective Hardin,” I said, holding out my badge
for his inspection
.

The punk rolled his eyes
as if
bored. “You here about the Midnight Monster?”

C
aught off guard, I asked, “Why
would
you think that?”

“Du
h
,” he smirked, “
Y
ou’re a cop, this is a vampire shop and the Midnight Monster drinks blood.”

“Where did you hear that?”
I pressed.

“Around,” he
answered
smugly.

I
wanted to rip one of the studs out of his nose, but I
r
e
frained
. I
assumed one of the local tabloids had heard rumors about the blood loss in the victims.
So
much for security.
“Do you know of any of your blood sucking buddies who might want to push the boundaries a bit on this, uh, vampire cult thing?”

“Dude, get real. People come in here to buy fake teeth, wigs, Goth clothing and stuff like that. I don’t even know anybody who files their teeth for real or who drinks blood.
” He made a face. “
That’s
so
gross.”

I glanced at Lew rummaging around the shelves, picking up and examining items. One item he held out for my inspection was a sharp dagger. Another was a meat hook made of ivory or whalebone. It looked sharp enough to rip open a person’s throat.

“Sell many of those?” I asked, pointing to the hook.

“Th
ose
just arrived yesterday. I haven’t sold any.
Look, man, like I said, people who shop here are mostly teens and few lame gamers in their twenties, but no one who takes this shit seriously. It’s just a way to get high and to get laid, a way to look badass on an allowance.
This Monster dude, he’s the real freakin’ thing.”

The punk was getting excited talking about the killer,
as if
he admired him. It was pissing me off.

“He’s a sicko who’s murdered four young girls
,
” I
growled. I
pulled my pistol.
The punk’s
eyes went wide and he backed away from the counter. “I don’t think I’ll need any silver bullets to blow his freakin’ head off
with this
.”

I replaced my pistol in my shoulder holster wishing now I hadn’t drawn it. The motion started my shoulder burning
again
. At least I had gotten the punk’s full attention.

“If you hear anything, give us a call, or else we’ll park a
marked
car outside your door. I’ll bet you won’t sell many of those water pipes in the glass case there with us
sitting
outside.”

He nodded his head, looking reasonably chastised
and more than a little frightened
. I felt better after letting off a little steam.

Outside, Lew said, “I thought you were going to shoot the bastard.”

“Too much paperwork. Come on. We won’t find our man with these wannabes. I think our guy has graduated to the big time.”

I felt certain we would find the Sattersby girl’s body at the
monastery
. Our killer wanted us to find it. He had seen us and we had seen him. Now
,
it was a battle to see who blinked first.

5

Sasha Sattersby’s right arm throbbed unmercifully and hung uselessly by her side. She
didn’t know whether
the bone was broken
or if her shoulder was
dislocated
.
It made little difference which
. Either way the pain was excruciating.
Laying on it didn’t help matters. She tried to move to relieve the pressure but the creature
perched above her shifted its pos
i
tion
menacingly
. She stopped. Its red eyes stared down at her hungrily. She shuddered and not just from the
penetrating
chi
l
l of the damp tile beneath her. She was in the middle of a nightmare but she knew she was awake.

When the creature had attacked her in her home, it had her taken a few moments to realize the reality of the situation – monsters really did exist. Then her instincts had taken over. She had taken two years of kung fu mainly as a way
of
stay
ing
fit and thin, but faced with a hellish creature from her deepest, drug-induced nightmare she knew she had to fight to live. Her first blow to its chest had done nothing. Her second to its groin even less. Sensing the hopelessness of fighting, she had tried to run but the creature slammed into her back, sending her careening into the wall with enough force to knock her breath
less
. Fiery pain quickly followed as the creature sliced into her arm with razor sharp talons in its attempt to drag her through the shattered balcony door. Clinging to the curtains and kicking at him had delayed him only a few seconds. Her damaged arm could not retain its grip.