The Zero Dog War (30 page)

About the Author

Keith Melton has written two other completely unfunny books,
Blood Vice
and
Run, Wolf
. He has the annoying tendency of referring to his friends as minions and dislikes gelatin desserts. He is currently plotting his return to power from a reeducation camp in the desolation of Eastern Oregon.
The Zero Dog War
is Keith Melton’s third published title.

To learn more about Keith, please visit
www.keithmelton.net
.

Mafia hit man. Vampire. The criminal underworld just got a whole lot darker.

Blood Vice

© 2009 Keith Melton

The Nightfall Syndicate
, Book 1

Business has never been better for hit man Karl Vance. Boston is awash in mafia blood, and Vance has a certain fondness for blood. He’s a master vampire—one of the most powerful of his kind. Having sworn to never again feed on the blood of innocents, Karl preys instead on Boston’s criminal underworld. Which makes him a valuable asset to those who deal in death.

Maria Ricardi intends to use that asset to its full extent in order to gain power within her patriarchal crime family. Vance thinks he’s been hired to keep track of the family’s princess, but she’s got a plan to get her hands dirty and earn the respect she deserves. And she’s not above using their instant attraction to get what she wants.

That driving ambition draws the attention of a rival clan’s newest and most dangerous “consultant.” Alejandro Delgado, Vance’s centuries-old nemesis. Delgado zeroes in on the one chink in Vance’s armor—his fondness for the headstrong Maria.

When she becomes enslaved by Delgado’s unnatural kiss, only one thing is certain. Vance has to decide which he wants more. To settle the score—or rescue her soul.

Warning: Intense, graphic mafia-related violence, profanity, gangster slang, assassinations, fang punctures, explicit vampire sex, betrayal, greed, murder, gangland warfare, pervasive supernatural mayhem, large-scale explosions, and extremely expensive Italian suits.

Enjoy the following excerpt for
Blood Vice:

Karl smelled the other vampire first. The stink of death was hidden beneath a mix of other scents—cinnamon, old blood and a darker, more animal smell. The musk of the lion’s den, of the stalking wolf pack, of the lone predator stealing through the jungle. Not a human scent by any stretch.

Karl closed his eyes and focused all his power and senses on the night. He could sense the vampire a half mile, maybe more, to the southeast. The vampire was partially shielding himself, so that in Karl’s mind the sensation of him was a cold, black pulse sweeping across Karl’s senses like radio waves from a pulsar.

He set out toward the southeast, focusing in on that pulsing darkness. A young vampire, almost certainly. No experienced nightwalker would ever make so careless a mistake as to hunt without completely concealing his presence. Unless it was a trap.

It took only minutes to cover the distance, sprinting across rooftops and power and cable lines. He slowed down as the feel of the other vampire grew close. He could smell only the one—a male. Again, unless it was a trap. Scents, like that cold black presence, could be masked with skillful use of a vampire’s powers.

Karl crouched at the edge of a large auto parts store above the twin security lights that blazed down into the adjacent parking lot of a chain motel. The second vampire felt very close, hidden in the shadows somewhere in the half-filled parking lot.

He heard the high heels first.
Clack, clack, clack
on the asphalt. A jingle of keys, quickly silenced. A moment later, a young woman came around the corner of the motel. She hurried along, increasing her pace. Her hair blazed a sunset of yellow and orange when she passed briefly under a lamppost, and he saw how pretty she was, how young. Nineteen, twenty at most, dressed in a dark suit that accented her figure, elegant and tasteful. She glanced left and right and behind her as she walked. Her keys glinted as they poked out from between her fingers. A cautious girl, and that was good, but keys wouldn’t save her from what waited in the shadows.

Karl scanned the parking lot again, his vampire sight piercing all darkness. Nothing. But the sense of that other vampire was stronger than ever. He glanced at the young woman. Her face was the face of every girl who had mysteriously disappeared—of every girl he’d ever found pale and dead through the centuries.

He stood to his full height. Hundreds of smells continually flooded his senses, everything from the stink of death from the other vampire to the thick scent of spilled motor oil. In the distance rose the long mournful howling of dogs. Perhaps that was what had made the woman cautious—the howling, a sound that shivered down the spine like an icy finger drawn slowly down the back.

There
. The other vampire was crouched in the shadow of a black SUV. The vampire’s pale red eyes glowed from the heart of the shadow, tracking the young woman with the greed of a lioness eyeing a gazelle.

Karl jumped from the roof of the auto-parts store, landed silently in a crouch and then sprinted toward the girl. When he moved this fast, the world scrolled in fast-forward in front of him, while the woman’s movements were slow, advancing frame by frame.

The vehicles opposite her provided him plenty of cover as he slowed and changed direction, moving parallel to her. She hadn’t seen him, he was certain of it, but she began to move faster. Her heels
clack-clack-clack-clacked
now, almost as fast as her heartbeat.

The woman would pass very near the SUV. Karl changed course again, cutting directly toward her, pushing himself harder, faster.

The other vampire saw Karl approaching his prey and his eyes flared a deeper red. His lips pulled back from his gleaming fangs. He crouched, gathering strength to spring.

From this close, Karl could smell the blood in the young woman’s veins. Warm. Rushing through her body as her heart thundered away, life in liquid, a heart-blood sacrament.

The woman glanced back at Karl an instant before he reached her. Her eyes widened, poured full of sudden terror, and her mouth dropped open. The spiked fistful of keys came up. She drew in breath—he could hear it skating across her white, even teeth.

Karl launched himself past her and into the leaping vampire, driving him into the asphalt, rolling, tumbling, shoving a hand up under the vampire’s chin to force back those striking fangs.

The woman staggered backward, key-spiked fist still held high, her other hand lifted as if to push them away, back into the darkness from which they’d come.

Karl looked her in the eyes. “Run.”

She kicked off her shoes—one spike-heeled pump sailed past like some strangely shaped bird and hit the side of the SUV with a clunk—and then she sprinted away as fast as any human he’d ever seen.

The vampire made another wrenching lunge toward her, trying to free himself of Karl’s grip. Karl grappled with him, twisted around and shoved the vampire’s arm upward at a vicious angle and heard bone shatter. The vampire grunted, writhed like a snake and tried to sink his teeth into Karl’s throat. Karl drove his head forward, smashing his forehead into the vampire’s lips, splitting them open. Thick black blood seeped out of his mouth.

The vampire twisted again, ripping its arm away. Karl felt the arm dislocate, but the vampire gave no sign of noticing. Karl shot out his other hand and seized the vampire’s ankle.

“You fucking traitor,” the vampire said, claws scrabbling on the asphalt as he tried to drag himself free. “She’s mine!”

The vampire yanked free of Karl’s grip with a snarl and started after the woman. Karl sprinted after him, shot his hand out and seized the back of the vampire’s neck.

The vampire thrashed as if he were a feral cat held by the scruff. Karl spun, wrenching the vampire around, and hurled him into a cinderblock wall. The vampire turned in midair. Instead of slamming into the wall headfirst, he impacted with his feet and launched himself back at Karl.

Karl dodged aside and slashed the vampire’s face, opening that pale skin with his claws. The vampire shrieked, setting all the dogs to howling louder than ever. A moment later several lights came on in the motel rooms.

The vampire tumbled away, rolled to a crouch, and then stood slowly. The deep wounds in his face seeped that stinking black blood. If Karl had brought one of his silver knives, this would’ve been over already. The hard way always took longer, and there was usually a bigger mess in the end.

“Those fingernails of yours fucking sting,” the vampire said. His ghostly pale hands and face seemed almost to glow against the night sky. His cheeks were flayed open and one lip hung in tatters, turning what might have been a plain face on a human into a grotesque nightmare on a vampire.

“Where’s Delgado?” Karl asked.

“Never mind him. That bitch was
mine
.”

Karl considered him. “What do they call you?”

“Farrell.” Big grin, showing off his teeth. “I’m a nasty bastard.”

“No doubt.”

Farrell heard the contempt in his voice. “You fucking kill-stealing piece of
shit
. They told me about you.”

“Who told you?” Karl took a step toward him. To his credit, Farrell didn’t back away.

“The Master told me. He tells all his children about the Traitor.” Farrell began to laugh—an empty, echoing cackle that might have come from a crazy old man. “The Master has plans for you.”

“It doesn’t matter what he said. I’ll slaughter all his children and then cut out his silent heart.” Karl paused, cocking his head. “I’m sure Delgado mentioned that we don’t get along…?”

Karl smiled, and Farrell stepped backward. Sirens had begun to wail in the distance, and they joined with the howls of the dogs, filling the air with a soundtrack for the end of the world.

The glow in Farrell’s eyes had lost some of its shine. “I never hurt that girl.”

“I wonder how your blood will taste?” Karl said, ignoring him. “No matter how sour I find vampire blood, I always relish it far more than human blood.”

Farrell’s claws cut black crescents out of his fingers. “You act like a savior, but you’re really just another killer, just like us. You feed on the cattle just the same.”

Karl said nothing. Watching.

“You can’t save anyone,” Farrell continued. “Not the humans. Not yourself. The Master is laughing at you, Traitor. He killed all your friends, and he wants you to know that now he’s here for you.”

Farrell lunged forward, claws slicing the air, fangs bared. Karl leapt to meet him head on.