Then there's the babies. I've found enough of them to start a nursery school over the years.
Usually in the trash. They fall into two categories. The first are obvious stillbirths and miscarriages, delivered by the homeless women who huddle in desolate squats or doss down under freeway overpasses throughout this land. Here, too, they bear a surprising similarity to one another: most are still bloody, their nostrils plugged with mucus, and tiny, discolored faces compressed into constipated frowns, fists clenched as if outraged by the very idea of being brought, half-unmade, into a cruel, uncaring world. Usually the stillborns are bundled in newspaper, like day-old fish or a bouquet of faded roses; the only evidence of the women who birthed them a foot or so of raggedly severed umbilical cord.
I feel a small sorrow for the stillborns—the same I experience when I come across tiny fledglings that have attempted flight with unready wings—but part of me knows the poor things are better off having never taken their first breath. Good luck next time, kid—I hope.
Then there are the ones in the plastic bags. The ones that have taken that first breath, cried that first cry—and were never given a reason to stop. The ones with the bruises and the broken limbs and the black eyes and the scalding scars and the cigarette burns and the bite marks and the torn vaginas and the ruptured anuses. There's not much I can do for them besides make an anonymous phone call to the cops. I like to think the story doesn't really end there, though. Hopefully there is an end coda, of sorts. But I've learned never to hope too hard or too long for such things. It only results in breaking off another piece of what's left of my heart, and there's precious little to spare.
Of course, if I happen to
witness
the disposal of the body—well, that's a different matter entirely, and always ends with tiny victim and killer sharing the same dumpster.
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) Like I said, I usually tend to stroll in after the end credits have run, the fat lady's sung, the groundskeepers have rolled the tarp over the pitching mound—choose whichever metaphor you prefer. As a result, I've tripped over more stiffs during the last twenty-five years than Cherri Vanilla.
Most came to their ends rather messily and involuntarily. Some were killed by the things I hunt, but most have been brought low by their own kind—that little ol' psychopathic naked ape called Man. I often find myself staring at their dead faces, as if I might glimpse a last fading image, echoing deep inside the brain's gray folds. Sometimes I can, if they're freshly dead.
If they're too far gone for me to scope them out telepathically, I usually check the area for signs of occult energy to see if their recently disincorporated spirits might be wandering about, gaping at their new surroundings like tourists from Wisconsin. Such shades need a quick but gentle nudge into the afterlife if they don't want to find themselves trapped between worlds for the next decade or two. I feel its the least I can do, given the circumstances.
I'm telling you all this so you'll understand how rare it is for me to actually witness
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) someone else's story from start to finish. But it happens. Take this one, for instance. I didn't realize I was walking in on the opening curtain. In fact, it looked pretty damn final to me.
I was making my usual rounds, checking out the dark alleys, abandoned buildings, and lonely places where the things I hunt like to take their prey. The thing is, its not just vampires who like desolate, dark locations to go about their dirty deeds—the human variety of monster prefers these sites as well.
I found the bodies in a blind alley in an inner-city industrial zone that would make Hell's Kitchen look like a Martha Stewart makeover. I don't know how they got there, unless they were brought from another location for a leisurely execution, because they certainly weren't the type to wander the neighborhood, especially after dark.
Both were male, although the smaller of the two was so slender and short I first mistook him for a woman. The slightly built one was an Asian male—possibly Japanese, although it was hard to tell, since his face had been reduced to pulp. It looked like someone had literally jumped up and down on him. There was also semen pooled in the coagulated blood that leaked from his shattered mouth. Whoever had beaten the poor bastard to death—and there had been several of them—also orally raped him beforehand. He was neatly dressed, although his pressed chinos and white linen shirt were now stained by his own blood and his killers' piss. A small Silence=Death button, no larger than my thumb, was pinned to his shirt collar.
The second body was considerably larger and older than that of the first. He had been a black man with touches of natural gray at the temples of his neatly-kept, close-cropped hair. While tall and big-boned, he hadn't been overly muscular. My impression was of a college athlete turned teacher. He wore a black navy-style swing jacket, a black turtle neck sweater, and black slacks. Although he hadn't been worked over nearly as badly as the Asian, I counted at least six stab wounds in his upper body. He'd put up a fight—no doubt while trying to protect his friend.
Judging from the bodies' state of decay, I estimated they'd been dead for at least the better part of a day. It wasn't hard for me to figure out the story that lead to this sad end. These hapless lovers were the victims of the Regent Sides, a lovely collection of human flotsam that espoused white supremacy and homophobia in equal measure. Although, judging from the physical evidence, their hatred of gays didn't prevent them from getting hard-ons.
I shook my head in disgust at the death scene. At times like this it wasn't hard to understand how vampires justify their clandestine manipulation and culling of human society. My one solace was the knowledge that those responsible for such an act bore as much resemblance to the humans who compose operas and build cathedrals as baboons resemble men.
However, even when confronted by such utter barbarity, there was evidence of that which is good and pure in Mankind amidst the horror and ruin. My gaze returned to the older of the pair. Despite overwhelming numbers and the certainty of physical harm, this man had died trying to protect his lover. I had to respect his bravery and devotion, although I had no way of knowing who he had been.
Or did I? I dropped to one knee beside the body and began searching for some form of identification. It was possible that during the excitement the Regent Sides might have forgotten to take his wallet. I was right. I found it tucked inside the jacket's breast pocket.
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) I flipped the worn calf-skin billfold open and discovered my first guess concerning the dead man's occupation had been on target.
According to the faculty ID, the dead man sprawled before me was a history professor at the university. His name had been Clarence Sadler, and, in life, he'd borne a slight resemblance to Harry Belafonte. "What a fucking waste," I grunted, snapping the wallet shut.
Sadler's eyes flew open. I've seen dead men open their eyes before. That much didn't surprise me. However, the sitting up part did.
Sadler rose up slowly, a dazed and confused look on his face. It seemed to take him a long second to realize I was there, although he was staring me right in the face. He wetted his lips with a dry, blackened tongue and said; "I came back."
"Yeah. So I noticed." I was already on my feet, keeping my eye on Sadler as he clumsily regained his footing. If I hadn't seen him come back from the dead, it would be easy to mistake him for a drunk as he staggered and lurched on his newly resurrected legs.
I quickly placed myself outside possible striking distance, my switchblade sliding into my hand as if it had been there all along. I automatically dropped my vision into the Pretender spectrum, scanning the dead man's aura in order to identify his breed, only to be further baffled.
Where the auras of vampires are usually corrupted, resembling pulsing, livid bruises, Sadler's was completely black. It was as if he wore an eclipsed sun as a halo. I'd never seen anything like it before, although it seemed to trigger some distant memory. Whatever revenant he might be, it certainly wasn't a vampire or a ghoul. I wondered what manner of supernatural event could pull a man back from the fields of the dead.
"K-kiko?" Sadler had spotted the twisted, lifeless form of his partner amidst the trash and detritus of the alley. "Kiko—are you all right?" He dropped to his knees beside the body, reaching out with trembling hands to roll it onto its back. I didn't have to read his mind to know Sadler realized his lover was dead.
Sadler gave a throaty sob as he saw what was left of his lover's face and pulled him closer, pressing the ruined pulp against his breast. As he cradled Kiko's body like a broken doll, Sadler's mouth pulled itself into a rictus of grief, so that for a moment his features resembled those of a Greek tragedy mask, and a dreadful wail issued forth from deep inside him. It was a horrible, hopeless, despairing noise—the sound made by destroyed love and shattered lives. Sadler folded himself over Kiko's body, as if he could somehow warm it back to life— but his flesh was just as cold.
"Look what they did to your face—your beautiful, beautiful face!" he moaned, when he finally found words.
I drew back, feeling somewhat awkward. I had no place in this man's grief—for I had come to the conclusion that he was exactly what he was, instead of a ghoul, zombie, vampire, or larvae. I knew from personal experience that none of those creatures were capable of such sorrow. He did not warrant extermination, from what I could see.
Granted, he was one of the living dead—but then again, so am I. Just as I was about to leave him to his mourning, Sadler lifted his head and spoke directly to me.
"He didn't deserve this."
"I know."
"He was so beautiful—you can't tell that by—by what they did, but he was the most
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) handsome man I'd ever seen in my life. The moment I first laid eyes on him at the library I knew he was the one—the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with." Sadler smiled at the memory and I caught a brief, mental glimpse of Kiko, alive and whole, flashing a smile as he re-shelved books from a librarian's cart. The memory had that golden glow that comes from being cherished. In the immediate wake of the memory came a wave of grief and love that were so strong I found myself raising psychic shields to protect myself from Sadler's pain.
"It was his beauty and love that gave me the courage to finally come out to my family, my associates, and the school. It was hard— especially with my family—but Kiko stuck by me, and whenever I weakened, he made me strong again. I—I would have died for him. I guess I did—didn't I?" This last part was addressed to me.
"Yes. Yes, I'm afraid you did.'
'I thought it might have been a dream—no, a nightmare, at first. But now I can see it wasn't. The skinheads grabbing us as we left the Tosca, bringing us here in their van, what they did to Kiko and myself, the bird, the talking skull—all that really happened."
"Uh-huh," I replied, although I had no idea what he was going on about.
Sadler looked me in the eye, his voice surprisingly level, as he tenderly lay Kiko's body to rest once more. "Am I a vampire?" "Not hardly."
He didn't seem completely satisfied by my answer. "Are you sure?"
"Believe me, I know my suckers, and you ain't one of them," I said, flashing him a smile.
The sight of my fangs threw him for a second—he hadn't been one of the living dead long enough to over-ride a lifetime of human behavior. "O-okay—if I'm not a vampire, then what am I?"
"I'm not sure. You said something about a bird—?"
"A raven or crow of some kind...It talked to me. Told me that I was being given a chance to right the scales...There was a woman, too. At least, I think it was a woman. She had a skull instead of a face. She took her head from her shoulders and held it like a bowl. There was something—wine?—blood ?—inside it. She offered the skull to me and told me to drink. Does this make any sense?"
I nodded slowly, chewing on a thumbnail. "Sorta. At least I have an idea what kind of walking dead man you are. If the stories I've heard are anything to go by, you're an Avenger. You were reanimated by a force far more ancient than any name human religion has ever given it—be it Sekhmet, Kali, Fury, or Nemesis.
"It is a thing that might have been a goddess—or perhaps still is. In any case, she is a being steeped in blood, without mercy or respite. Yet she is not a demon, as the Christians have come to define the term; she is not the handmaiden of Chaos, but a shadow of Order.
She is the Angel of the Pit, the Punishing Mother, the Divine Scourge. Hers is the face of dark justice—and her power is that of righteous indignation and holy rage. And you—
Clarence Sadler— have been made her anointed champion. You've been sent back from the land of the dead to bring those guilty of the crimes against you and your beloved not to human justice—but to immortal judgment. You are an Avenging Spirit, given one last chance to set right the scales of justice."
Sadler nodded his head as I spoke, as if the words were a key that had turned a lock within him. "Yes," he whispered.
"Judgment."
He looked up at me, and for a brief moment I saw something very old and very, very dangerous staring out at me through his eyes. He
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) smiled then—or should I say
It
smiled for him, spun on his heel, and swiftly sprinted off into the darkness.
"Hey! You're going the wrong way!" I shouted.
When he didn't reply, I started after him, although I was uncertain I really wanted to spend any more time in the revenant's company. That smile—it was not unlike that of someone who realizes that even his closest compatriot has not recognized his true identity. When I reached the end of the blind alley, Sadler was nowhere to be found, although he couldn't have had more than a two second head start.