A Grave Hunger

A Grave Hunger

G. Hunter

A Grave Hunger

2014

Copyright © 2014 G. McGuinness/ G. Hunter

All Rights Reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form or by any means, including scanning, photocopying, or otherwise without prior written permission of the copyright holder.

This book is dedicated to my loving family, who have always supported and encouraged me throughout my life. Thank you for believing in me and teaching me that if I believe in myself I can achieve anything!

PART 1

LEAH

PROLOGUE

"Revenge is lost in agony, and wild remorse to rage succeeds." - Lord Byron

*****

My mother once told me that love is absolute. If you let it, it can take you on an amazing journey. But revenge... revenge is a dark and sinister force.  It will blacken your heart and corrupt your soul. It is like a plague, thriving on hate, destroying everything it touches until there is nothing left; no love, no compassion, no hope. It will suck the life from you, until you are an empty shell of who you once were. 

Her words continually echo through my mind. Like a parrot chanting the words over and over, begging me to acknowledge, to concede. I wish I could. But I cannot yield, not until this is over.

By then, who knows what will be left of me?

CHAPTER 1

My gaze darted around the room. I had become hyper vigilant, never really being able to fully relax, always on the lookout for something out of the ordinary or any signs of possible danger. At this particular moment, I could describe the interior of the pub exactly, from the number of people in the room, to the colour and pattern of the shabby, peeling wallpaper. My first duty on entering a room was to quickly determine every possible exit, in case I encountered any problems. Some people might call it paranoia, but I knew different. I knew that this world was not as soft and cuddly as I once thought it was. This world contained real evil. I used to have a naive outlook about the world. I knew the depraved and wicked things humans could do to each other, but I also thought these events were few and far between and limited to a small minority of the population. I now knew that the world contained more evil than I could have ever imagined, and that there was more than just humans to worry about. I was constantly on the lookout for these dangers. It was exhausting, but it gave me a sense of security. And that was something that I desperately needed in my life.

I took a sip of my scotch whiskey. As I made another sweep of the room, all I saw was a handful of sombre, miserable, middle-aged men propped up against the bar. The men looked as though they had given up on life. Whatever disappointments and misfortunes they had experienced in their depressing lives had brought them here, to this sad, dingy bar. I could relate. I knew exactly how these men felt. They had come here to drink themselves into oblivion in order to forget or block out the pain.

I longed to join them. To drink so much that I could forget. To block out the horrors of my own life, even if only for a few hours. I had promised myself that once this was all over, that would be exactly what I would do. But not yet. I had allowed myself one drink of whiskey a day. It was more a case of nostalgia than anything else. The drink reminded me of home, of happier times. It was funny that back in Scotland, where I grew up, I never touched the stuff. I remember my dad pouring me a dram of whiskey one Christmas day and almost throwing up as it hit my stomach. I still didn't particularly enjoy the taste, but since I had moved to America eighteen months ago, it was something that tied me to home and reminded me of family. I needed this reminder. It kept me focused on my task, reminding me of what I had lost, and kept me motivated on what I had still to do.

I took another drink. The liquid burned as it flowed smoothly down my throat. My instincts told me I was being watched, and as I looked up, I locked eyes with a middle-aged man a few bar stools down. He smiled, his teeth yellowed and rotten from too many years of smoking and drinking. I gave a polite nod and silently cursed as he slid from his barstool and stumbled over toward me.

"Hi, beautiful. Can I buy you a drink?" he slurred, leaning closer to me, the alcohol giving false courage.

I leaned back on my stool, away from him, as the smell of stale beer wafted from his open mouth.

"Thanks, but I was just leaving," I replied, smiling politely.

He shrugged. "Suit yourself," he mumbled as he stumbled back to his bar stool to continue his drink and return to his sorrows.

I downed the last of my drink and hopped off the bar stool, making my way toward the exit.   Pushing the door open, I flinched as the brilliant, bright sunlight hit my eyes, a vivid contrast to the dim, shadowy interior of the pub. As I slowly made my way back to my motel room, I thought how drastically my life had changed in the last eighteen months.

This time eighteen months ago I had still been living in Scotland, in a small farming town just outside Glasgow. Where everyone knows your name and every aspect of your life. There are no secrets in a small town, but I didn't mind so much. I enjoyed the community spirit and the quiet, drama-free life where no one felt the need to lock their doors at night and everyone was your friend. I had lived there all my life, born and raised, and when I turned 21, I left the family house I had shared with my mum, dad and younger sister and had moved into my very own home in the same town. It wasn't that I was scared or had no interest in exploring the world, and in fact I had done my share of travelling over the years, but I had always come back home after a few months. Due mainly to the fact that my family was there.  Even after my sister and I had moved out of the family home, we all still saw each other several times throughout the week and had a family lunch every Saturday. I felt a pang of sadness as I thought about the last time I had seen my family. One of my cousins was getting married in America, and we had all been invited. My request for leave from work to attend the wedding had been declined, so my mum, dad and sister had gone without me. I dropped them off at the airport, exchanging hugs. They promised they would take lots of photos and phone me as soon as they had landed in New York.

A week later I received the phone call that would change my life forever.

I vividly remember that phone call. I can tell you exactly what I was doing at the time and every word of the conversation. That particular event was permanently etched into my memory. The woman on the other end of the line had explained that my family had been found dead. It had been the assumption that they had been walking back to the hotel after my cousin's wedding when they had been attacked. I remember asking what had happened to them and getting a vague response.  She had sounded flustered and kept stumbling over her words. She explained that their bodies had been found under "unusual circumstances", but couldn't elaborate further over the phone. She would try to explain when she saw me in person, so I could officially ID the bodies' and make the arrangements to transport their bodies' home.

I had flown to New York the following day. Still in shock, in denial. Unable to accept that what I had been told was true, until I saw the bodies for myself. I spent the whole flight praying that there had been some sort of mistake, that the phone call was meant for some other poor, unsuspecting person. It couldn't be true.

But there was no mistake. I remember looking down on the cold, metallic gurneys that held the bodies of my mum, dad and sister, and feeling nothing. It hadn't felt real. It was as if I was watching a movie. Watching, but yet still detached from the situation, not really a part of it. It was explained that my family had died from exsanguination. Supposedly a wild animal, like a wolf or coyote, had attacked them. Each had one singular bite mark on their jugular, which had caused them to bleed to death. I was reassured that they would have died quickly and that they wouldn't have suffered long. However, I got the feeling that they told this to all the misfortunate people that had to come into this morgue, to give them at least some semblance of peace.

It made no sense. An animal attack in the middle of New York City. How many wolves or coyotes do you see roaming around a city, especially one as populated as New York City? I asked this question to the police officers in charge of the investigation, as well as many other questions that I had. However, they failed to answer any of my queries with any certainty.

The police were forthcoming with me, but they were stumped. They couldn't explain the strange circumstances surrounding my family's deaths. None of it added up. Firstly, how could a wild animal such as a wolf roam about a city undetected? Apparently, the police had checked with animal control and there had been no reports of a wild animal anywhere in the city. There were other things in the investigation that couldn't be explained, such as the injuries on their bodies. My mum, dad and sister had all died from one single bite mark, all in exactly the same place on each body. No defence wounds anywhere else on their bodies, no scrapes, no cuts, no animal fur under fingernails. Nothing. If an animal attacked you, surely you would defend yourself. Most disturbingly of all was the fact that all three bodies had been completely drained of blood. The average human body has five litres of blood, but not a drop had been found at the scene.

I had gone through the following weeks in a daze. These unanswered questions continually buzzed around in my head but I was getting no answers. I spent hours trawling through internet articles and sifting through various books to try and get some closure and some sort of explanation as to why this had happened. I also consulted dozens of vets and animal specialists, but none could offer any explanations of any animal that would drain a body completely of its blood.

I was falling to pieces. No chance of getting any closure, or even giving myself the opportunity to grieve, until I could explain why this had happened, and who or what was responsible. I needed something to blame, something to focus my grief on.

I had become obsessed with finding answers, but I was out of options. My research had yielded no results. The only lead I hadn't pursued was to visit the place where my family had been killed, to see if anything would give me a clue as to what had happened. The thought of going to the crime scene had filled me with dread. Could I visit the place where my family had been slaughtered? I wasn't sure if I was strong enough for that, but when you are that desperate for answers, you will do just about anything. So I faced my fears and went to the crime scene.

I really didn't expect to find anything. It had been weeks since my family's deaths and the crime scene had already been processed by the authorities and opened back up to the public. I was sure any evidence would have long since been destroyed by the weather or by people just going about their day-to-day lives. I also wasn't so arrogant to think that I would miraculously find a key piece of evidence that the police and crime scene investigators had missed.

My family's bodies were found in an alley behind their hotel. The thought was that they had been trying to take a short cut through the alley, rather than walking the long way around to the building's main entrance. I don't know what I expected to find in that alley, maybe some crime scene police tape flapping in the wind or a chalk outline of where the bodies had been found, but what I found was something that changed my views on the world.

CHAPTER 2

I don't know how long he had been standing in that alley watching me, but when he spoke, I jumped, feeling chagrined at being caught investigating something I couldn't quite explain.

"You looking for something in particular?" he said in a smooth southern drawl.

Leaning casually against the wall was a man in his late fifties. He was dressed in jeans, a worn leather jacket and a baseball cap. He had a scruffy look about him and seemed like he hadn't shaved or showered for a few days. I should have felt a sense of risk, being confronted by this scruffy man, being alone in this dark alley, especially when I knew the horrifying scene that met my family here a few weeks before, but I felt total ease. I don't know what it was about him, maybe the open look in his eyes or the fact that the pain I had kept bottled up for the last few weeks had started to erupt, but I found myself opening up to him and telling him the truth. I told him what happened to my family in this alley and of the strange circumstances of their deaths. I felt a sense of relief as I unloaded the horror I had been through. It felt good to have someone to talk to after having kept all the misery and pain bottled up for so long. I expected him to give me a sympathetic look and quickly make his leave from this strange, slightly unhinged, emotional woman, but instead he surprised me. He told me he was aware of my family's deaths, that he had been investigating their deaths and that he knew what had killed them. If I gave him the chance, he would explain everything. My desperation and need for answers was too much to resist, and I found myself following him to a local bar, where he told me of things I thought only existed in my nightmares.

As we sipped our whiskey, he had told me about himself and I realised how much we both had in common. His name was Robert and he had suffered a similar tragedy. Thirty years ago he had lost his wife, the circumstances of which were eerily similar to my own. He had returned home one morning after a business meeting out of town to find his wife dead. Her body had been completely drained of blood. At the time, the police had been stumped and had put it down to an animal attack. However, like me, Robert hadn't bought that. Especially since her body had been found inside a closed room. Whoever or whatever had killed her had managed to close and latch the door behind them as they left. The police had no leads and the case was eventually closed due to lack of evidence. He had pulled out a journal that he had been carrying in the inside pocket of his leather jacket and showed me the newspaper article of her death, along with dozens of other murders with the same strange cause of death. He went on to explain that he had also searched for answers. He had dedicated his life to stopping others from suffering the same misery that he had suffered. He was only sorry that he couldn't help me.

What he told me next should have shocked me. I should have dismissed it instantly, thought this man was crazy, unstable. After all, he was recounting tales that most only thought existed in urban legends and horror movies. However, what he said made complete sense. He had an explanation for all the unanswered questions that I had been desperately trying to solve.

"Your family was killed by a vampire," he had said, a look of hatred flashing in his eyes.

After that, I saw Robert every day. He taught me everything that he had learned over the years from researching and hunting these creatures. His house was a makeshift library, with books stacked ceiling-high containing vampire lore from around the world. His basement was converted into a training room and armoury, containing crash mats for hand-to-hand combat training and a range of weapons mounted on the walls around the room. In the corner was a prison cell, with a set of heavy metal cuffs bolted to the stone wall inside the coldly hostile cage.  His garage had been adapted to accommodate a large incinerator, which was used as a crematorium to destroy bodies or any other evidence that could link him to a murder by ignorant police. Robert was fastidious about destroying any evidence that could bring the police to his door.

I learned that most vampire folklore is crap. Most were superstitions and stories made up over the years to give people a sense of security from things that go bump in the night. A cross won't repel them and garlic doesn't affect them. Sunlight won't kill them and neither will a stake through the heart. They don't sleep in coffins and they don't have blood red eyes or a set of pointy fangs. In fact, they were human once. They look like any normal person, so you don't know it's a vampire until it's too late. Until that thing is towering over you and its second set of teeth descend, contorted and glistening. Then it's too late for you. I learned that, to vampires, humans are merely a food source. They don't care who they kill, or the devastation that they leave in their wake.  You can't bargain or reason with them in order to spare your life; they feel absolutely no remorse for killing a human.

But the blood lust, that part is true. They need fresh human blood to survive. Robert likened it to an addict, an addict that needs that next fix. They will do anything to satiate that urge.

There is only one known way to kill a vampire. To decapitate it. Lop off its head with a machete or piano wire or blast it off with a shotgun. Sounds simple enough, doesn't it? Not according to Robert. Vampires have a heightened sense of smell, sight and hearing, so a surprise attack is out of the question. They know you are coming. Not to mention their incredible strength. They can throw you clean across the room as though you weighed as little as a bag of sugar. This isn't to say that it can't be done. There are a handful of people around the world, such as Robert, who dedicate their lives to killing these creatures. You could call them specialists, slayers if you will. They have trained for years in order to kill them. Often, like Robert, they lost someone close because of a vampire and seek revenge for their loved ones.

Not many could do the job of a slayer. Robert described it as a hard, lonely job, often spent as some sort of nomad. Constantly on the move, travelling from one town to the next, one country to the next, always following signs and tracking the next vampire to hunt. Never really getting close to anyone and certainly never settling down with a family and kids. That would be far too dangerous; a vampire could always follow the slayer’s scent back to their family. No, a slayer can never open anyone else up to the danger their occupation affords them. Yes, the life of a slayer sounded like a very sad, lonely existence filled with unspeakable horrors and never knowing if your next hunt could be your last. Definitely not an occupation for the faint hearted.

So that's how it happened, how my new life began. Now that I knew exactly what it was that killed my family, I had a focus. Like many others that had entered into this profession, I was motivated by revenge. To find the evil son of a bitch that had killed my family, and probably many others, and kill it. Perhaps then I could get some peace, some closure. I knew I couldn't move on with my life until I did this. I owed it to my family, to myself. I quit my job and sold my house in Scotland and moved over to the U.S. permanently.

Over the next eighteen months, Robert taught me how to notice signs of vampire activity and how to track them. I spent hours each day learning how to fight and how to defend myself against vampires. Over the months I had become a skilled fighter in hand-to-hand combat, and proficient in a melee of weapons. I learned how to become vigilant in everyday situations in order to spot anything out of the norm and had honed my expertise in evasion techniques.

Robert introduced me to two brothers, Luke and Ryan. They were also slayers and I had worked alongside them. Although never on the front line. Robert had insisted that I still wasn't ready for that. So I had been put in charge of research and tracking and left at home while the others engaged in battle. I was desperate to get out there into the action, to fight alongside the others, to exact my revenge on the evil bastards that had taken my family. However, Robert had been adamant that I still wasn't ready for this fight. I wondered if the day would ever come when I would be.