Authors: Ian Haywood
“Why should I put my trust in you? I hardly know you!” I replied defensively.
Judging by the look on his face, I don’t think Lucius was very pleased with my last statement.
“Because I’m the only one who can get you out of this alive!” he answered firmly, “Besides, I’ve saved your life twice already. If I didn’t turn up when I did back in the hospital, who knows what could have happened to you! The police are supposedly protecting you and just by looking out of the window, you can clearly see how weak and feeble they are against him! I know Zephal’s strengths, but I also know his weaknesses and right now, whether you like it or not, I am your only hope of survival - so if I was you, I would stop questioning my integrity and be prepared to make a hasty getaway! He’s already killed out there and I’m sure he’s not going to stop until he finds us. Either you take your chances by leaving with me or stay knowing that when Zephal finds you, there’s a chance you could be leaving here in a body bag!”
I could see that Lucius meant every word he said and he had come to my rescue a number of times – in fact, I had to face up to the fact that he was indeed my only hope to get through this alive.
The police were proving to be a complete and utter joke and my one and only friend had disappeared when the shit hit the fan, leaving me completely on my own.
Some people may consider me mad right now, but believe me, if anyone went through what I have they will understand why I have to put my faith into a total stranger.
But a stranger who had saved my life nonetheless.
The only thing I needed to do was put on a pair of trainers and as I went to get them out from the bottom of my wardrobe, I tripped over the wet towel that I had left on the bedroom floor, causing me to fall onto my dressing table which had an endless supply of make-up and perfume bottles.
Needless to say, my clumsiness brought a few of the perfume bottles onto the floor and I grimaced as I heard a cracking noise.
One of the bottles had smashed and perfume was pouring from it onto the bedroom carpet and within moments, the strong smell of perfume filled the room becoming more and more pungent up to the point where it became incredibly overpowering.
So, I walked over to the window and without thinking, opened it to let fresh air in.
Lucius nearly knocked me over as he ran towards it.
“No! Don’t open the window!” he shouted as he did so.
“But we need fresh air! I can’t breathe in here!” I replied.
Lucius shook his head.
“You really have no idea what you have just done, do you? Zephal is outside unaware that you and I are in here, but just by opening the window, you may have given away where we are!”
And true enough, Lucius’s fears were confirmed as outside, Zephal had suddenly stopped for a moment after picking up a feint scent in the air.
A scent that was familiar to him.
A scent that made his game of hide and seek a lot more interesting.
He looked around the street and caught a glimpse of movement in a window a few yards down the street.
The scent grew stronger as he approached it and Zephal knew that he had found what he was looking for and wasted no time in breaking in.
But as he burst through the locked front door with great ease, Lucius and Naomi had already left through the back.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Zephal laughed to himself as he made light work of the locked front door to Naomi’s flat, but his brief smile soon ended as he immediately picked up the sickening scent that came from his enemy Lucius – and once again, he had managed to get to Naomi before he could.
He paused momentarily in an attempt to pick up some kind of noise that would give away which room they were in right now, but after failing to hear anything, he decided to go hunting through the flat for them.
His search proved to be fruitless as there was completely no sign of either of them anywhere.
Zephal could feel the anger within him growing stronger by the second and a sudden fit of rage took over completely, making him pick up the small table that was next to him in the hallway which he threw against one of the walls, breaking it upon impact and also leaving a large dent in the plaster board.
Once again Naomi had managed to escape from him and the hatred he had for his nemesis Lucius was growing more and more as each second passed – even though he couldn’t see Lucius right now, he certainly could smell him.
And the amount of scent lingering confirmed that Lucius must have been inside the flat for more than a couple of minutes – he must have made his way here seconds after their fight had been inadvertently ended back at the hospital.
In the confusion when the two of them had fallen through the open window, Lucius had managed to escape from Zephal.
Zephal remained in the hospital grounds for a while without being spotted by the two policemen and returned to the 6
th
floor to get Naomi, but she had already left the building.
Zephal continued to remain on the floor undetected and had even managed to eavesdrop on Harran’s conversation with Short to issue a patrol car to search for Naomi – and when Short carried out his orders, Zephal overheard the name of the street Naomi lived in.
He cornered the nurse who had been talking to Harran earlier in the staff room as she was finishing her shift and in no uncertain terms demanded to know where she was right now.
After finding out that she had helped Naomi to escape from the building, Zephal immediately handed out his own punishment for her actions and as he was just about to feed on her blood to regain his strength, Harran and Short rudely interrupted his feast.
He immediately escaped through an open window in the staff room with the knowledge that Naomi was heading for her home – but obviously Lucius had made his way there too.
When Zephal had arrived in Naomi’s street, he was unsure what number she lived in and easily spotted the two policemen in their parked car, trying to look inconspicuous, but failing badly.
He knew they would be his best chance of finding out, but Zephal’s instincts got the better of him and once again someone else paid the price for being unhelpful.
Luckily for Zephal, someone in Naomi’s flat was careless enough to open a window and reveal Lucius’s scent to him – just as he was drinking the blood from one of the policeman and he once again had to interrupt his feed.
But the excitement he felt a few moments ago at the prospect of finding Naomi and Lucius together soon changed to disappointment as it became more and more obvious that his targets had made an extremely hasty exit.
He had left his succulent prey lying in the road to find that the flat was completely empty.
Another scent was beginning to get stronger and stronger as Zephal walked down the hallway – and that was the smell of the perfume that had leaked out of the bottle Naomi had broken earlier.
But the perfume bottle was not going to be the only thing that would end up broken in Naomi’s bedroom.
Zephal completely lost it and began throwing anything that he could lay his hands on in every direction with the full intent of causing maximum damage to the room.
As he was doing so, he noticed that he could see out into the street and he paused to admire the horrific scene that he had left outside earlier.
A small crowd of people had begun to grow around the unmarked police car and Zephal laughed as he spotted the horror on some of their faces at the carnage that surrounded them.
A young couple seemed to be closest to the car and the woman produced a mobile phone from her handbag and proceeded to call the police, completely unaware that the two men lying before them were in fact policemen themselves.
Soon the air will be filled with the sound of police sirens coming from all directions to come to the aid of their colleagues and once again the normally quiet town has yet another murder scene to contend with.
But none of that was of Zephal’s concern – he had one thing on his mind and that was to hunt down Lucius and Naomi.
So, he knew in order to do that, he must leave the empty flat as soon as possible and go in search for them and as he went to leave the bedroom, he caught a glimpse of a photo frame on a chest of drawers, inside of which was a pencil sketch of Naomi and another woman.
He picked it up in order to take a closer look and true enough, the woman in the sketch with Naomi was indeed someone he knew very well, leading to an incredibly rare moment where Zephal was genuinely shocked.
Zephal could feel himself beginning to show physical signs of fatigue due to his two failed feeds and from completely out of nowhere, someone he knew extremely well had even managed to slip into the mortal world without his knowledge.
But being an incredibly strong high ranked army officer, Zephal was well-trained to deal with situations like this and he would undoubtedly continue his mission with no care whatsoever for his physical well-being.
There had already been an incredibly amount of blood spilt by Zephal so far – and undoubtedly there was about to be a lot more to come before his mission was complete.
Zephal stepped back into the hallway and looked directly at the damaged front door that he had entered through and instinctively realised that in order for Lucius and Naomi to escape so quickly without being spotted by him, they must have had an alternative exit route.
Zephal found it soon enough – in the living room was a partly opened patio door which led into a small garden.
The same garden where Naomi’s nightmare began last night.
And Zephal was about to continue it for her as he noticed the damaged gate that led into the alleyway that ran alongside Naomi’s flat which was indeed the route Lucius had taken her as they fled earlier.
But whatever head start they had managed to obtain while Zephal checked Naomi’s flat would be easily discovered as Lucius’s scent, no matter how much fainter it was in the open air, was still prominent enough for Zephal to pick up on.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Detective Sergeant Short had left the hospital and was currently less than half a mile away from Naomi’s street looking for the patrol car that had been issued to keep watch on Naomi’s whereabouts when his mobile phone began to ring.
He quickly picked it up from the passenger seat and took a quick glance at the caller’s name on the screen – it was Detective Inspector Harran.
Short pulled up at the side of the road and pressed the answer button and before he could say a word, Harran began talking.
“Short – you’re never going to believe this, but we’ve had an emergency call from someone in Naomi’s street saying there’s been all Hell breaking loose!”
“Are our men okay, Sir?” Short asked, concerned for his colleagues.
Harran’s pause was enough to indicate that not was all well with the policemen in the patrol car, but Harran continued.
“Short, there are a number of units heading to the scene as we speak and I need you to be my eyes and ears when you get there, okay? Give me a call back when you arrive there and we can talk a bit more.”
Short agreed and ended the call.
He went to start the car again, but paused momentarily to try and make some sense of what was happening.
Just as he regained some kind of composure, he could hear the feint sound of sirens a little distance away and within a few moments, they grew louder and louder until a number of police cars sped past him, accompanied by an ambulance.
Short didn’t need to call upon any of his specialist police training to work out that what was waiting for him in Naomi’s street was not going to be pretty in the slightest – and instinct told him that he may be seeing another body – maybe one of his colleagues again.
So he drove off behind the speeding convoy of emergency vehicles and sure enough when he arrived at the scene, the first thing Short saw was the damage that had been done to the unmarked police car.
Both its doors were open and the front passenger window had been smashed in and glass was visible on the ground.
But glass was not the only thing that was on the ground.
The scene was manic and the police officers who had just arrived were finding it extremely difficult to start moving the members of the public who had gathered there further down the street in order to establish a cordon around what looked like two bodies.
Short instantly knew that the two lifeless bodies lying on the floor right now must be the policemen who were in the car and whatever had attacked them certainly caused a substantial amount of damage to the car.
He parked his car up and headed towards the scene to get a better look before contacting Harran, who he knew would undoubtedly be waiting impatiently for his call.
Short managed to speak to a constable who had just been assigned to keep guard over the damaged car.
“What happened here?”
“I’ve never seen anything like it, sir!” came the reply, “The bodies on the floor are our men – one of them has even got some kind of puncture marks on his neck – as if something has bitten him!”
“What? Animal bite marks?” Short asked the melodramatic officer.
“God knows!” was the answer, “He certainly won’t be able to tell us anything.”
Short noticed that the other body was being tended to by two ambulance men and he quickly made his way over in the hope that one of the men had actually survived.
“How is he?” he asked.
One of the ambulance men stood up and started speaking quietly to Short.
“It’s hard to tell right now - he’s got a large number of injuries to his body and quite a few bones have been broken, but we’re concerned that he may have some serious internal injuries and need to get him to the hospital as quickly as possible.”
Short nodded his head and let the ambulance man continue helping to save the injured officer.
And now he would have to ring Detective Inspector Harran and explain to him what carnage Short was standing in the middle of right now.
Needless to say, Harran was not impressed with the news from Short and would soon be leaving the hospital to try and get there as soon as possible as the forensics team had arrived to take over.
Both Harran and Short knew how serious a situation they were all in right now.
“We seriously need to catch whoever’s doing this, Short, otherwise we are going to have a never ending bloodbath on our hands! If this guy keeps on killing like this, we’re going to lose the public’s trust and that would be disastrous for us all. I don’t think we realize the seriousness of all this.”
“Sir, with all due respect, the body count is already growing by the minute and we also have a police officer fighting for his life right now – I think we’re grasping the seriousness already!”
“Well, if we’re going to catch him, then I’m going to be the one who gets that bastard for what he’s done to some good honest members of this force! And if that means me and him standing nose to nose until one of us falls, then I am willing to do that because I owe it to the force, their families, you and myself. I will make sure he rots away in a prison cell before he gets to rot in Hell!”
“Sir, we certainly are dealing with some kind of madman because I’ve been told that the body here has a number of bite marks on his neck!”
“Bite marks?”
“Yes!” Short answered, “Maybe he thinks he’s a vampire of some sort!”
“Don’t waste my time with that vampire shit!” Harran said sternly, “We’re not talking Dracula here! They simply don’t exist, just folk tales from eastern Europe turned into films to scare people who are gullible enough to believe everything they see on the screen! If we advertise to the public that our chief suspect is a vampire, then we will be made a laughing stock and everyone will think us mad for even suggesting such a thing!”
“No offence, sir!” Short replied, “But even you have to admit that what we have witnessed over the last couple of days has not exactly been normal! You saw the state on the nurse’s neck when we found her – it looked like she had been bitten too!”
Harran paused for a few seconds and finally replied to Short.
“I am not jumping to any conclusions right now – certainly not anything involving mythical creatures, understand?”
“And what of the girl, Sir?” Short asked, changing the subject to hopefully calm down his heavily stressed superior.
“Has anyone checked her flat to see if she is in there?” Harran asked.
“I’ll find out right now for you, sir.” Short answered as he approached one of the officers to check.
The officer just shook his head and Short looked across the street and searched for number 25 – Naomi’s flat.
He found it and nearly dropped his mobile phone as he noticed that the front door had literally been ripped off its hinges – and with one body and another man fighting for his life out in the street right now, who knows what horror could be waiting for them in inside.
Short immediately called for two officers to join him and they made their way cautiously across the street, completely oblivious to the fact that Harran was continuously shouting down the mobile phone for Short to answer him.
CHAPTER NINETEEN
Short feared the worst as he got closer and closer to Naomi’s front door and was expecting to see a complete and utter bloodbath as soon as he got to look inside.
But there were definite signs that some kind of disturbance had happened inside as pieces of what looked like a wooden table were strewn across the hallway – but as the three policemen searched the rest of the flat, neither of them found one spot of blood.
Short was thankful at least that he was not in the middle of another murder scene and after giving out a huge sigh of relief; he realized that he had left Harran hanging on his mobile phone.
Needless to say Harran was not too pleased with being left holding on, but even he had to realize that a phone conversation would not have been the best thing to be happening in the midst of what was literally a life or death situation.
But Short relayed everything he saw back to Harran as he walked around the flat.
“Looks like definite signs of a struggle, Short? Front door knocked off its hinges, smashed objects around the place.”
“I’m not sure, Sir.” Short answered, but there was an air of puzzlement in his voice.
“You don’t think so?” Harran asked.
“Something doesn’t seem right – there’s no sign of blood anywhere in the flat and I am more than positive that if the man who broke down the front door was the same one who had caused all that carnage out in the street, there would be a good chance he would have also hurt the Gallagher woman if he saw her.”
“Had she actually returned to the flat after fleeing from the hospital?” Harran asked.
“Well,” Short answered, “the bathroom is still a little steamed up from someone having a shower in there not that long ago – and there is a damp towel on one of the bedroom floors.”
“Do you think she was in the flat when the man broke in then, Short?” asked Harran.
“I think she may have been dressed and gone by the time he burst in – or we could be looking for a pretty young naked woman right now.”
“I’m sure word would spread if that was the case, Short!”
“Maybe she heard the disturbance outside and saw what happened before getting dressed quickly to leave before her attacker went for her again!” Short said proudly.
“Go on, Short.” Harran replied as he realized his colleague was making great sense of what was going on around them.
“Or perhaps she had already left by some other route without being spotted– perhaps through another door. Now, where would that be?”
Short continued down the hallway, looking into every room as he passed it until he reached the last couple of rooms that the other officers had searched before giving the all-clear.
Short walked into the kitchen and found no sign of some kind of exit in there and just as he left it, he felt a light breeze coming from inside the other room.