Primacy of Darkness (5 page)

“Barring a match, I’ll concede that we are probably dealing with two killers,” Castillo says.

“I would be very surprised if that were not the case.”

“Great. I guess Angel and I have a lot of phone calls to make. Forward those DNA results straight to my desk as soon as you get them.”

“Will do, Sergeant.” Raj waits until the two detectives leave and whips the sheet off my body. “I assume you got all that?”

I swing my legs over the table and stand. “Yeah, thanks.”

“Was there anything useful for either of us that you can share?”

“Only that I get to play without technically breaking the rules.”

“I hardly doubt that breaking the rules would stop you.”

“Not a chance.”

CHAPTER 7

Trinh touched the earpiece hidden beneath her hijab. “Carol, do you have eyes on the target?”

“It’s Circe, and I can hardly see shit through this damn fog.”

“I thought it was Circe only when you were in Goth mode?”

“I decided I liked it, so it’s Circe from now on.”

“You mean until another name catches your fancy. Switch to the thermal scope. I’m going to do a pass and paint him for you.”

Trinh had identified the vampire three weeks ago and had spent the time up until now learning his routes and habits. She hated the fact that someone had likely fallen victim to his predation in that time, but vampires were hands down the most dangerous things in the world to hunt, and she needed every advantage she could create.

Robert Townson was a tailor of fine suits during the day, but it was his night-time activities that earned him his death warrant. Trinh knew he cut through the park every day after closing his shop and went home to his apartment. She had observed him leaving late at night on what she was certain were hunting forays, but she did not follow him. Chasing after a vampire while he was hunting was the best way to end up being the one on his dinner plate.

Trinh began walking toward him. She pulled the hijab up higher to cover the lower half of her face. She tried not to look at the vampire while still taking careful note of his proximity. It was late and nearing dusk, but the sidewalks were still crowded enough that she was able to bump into him and slip a heat pack, like the ones hikers use to warm their hands, into his jacket pocket.

“Target is marked. Can you see it?”

From a nearby rooftop, Circe peered through the thermal imaging scope mounted to her high-powered rifle. “He is lit up like the New Year’s disco ball. I’m glad we’re back to using the overwatch. Your little solo job on that last one scared the crap out of me.”

Trinh stopped and looked into a store window before turning back and following her target. “Me too, but sometimes it has to be done that way.”

“He’s at the next corner waiting to cross.”

“I see him.”

Trinh walked past him and continued straight across the street parallel to the one Robert was crossing. She would cross to the park two blocks up so she could position herself for an ambush. With any luck, she could take him down without a fight. Carol, Circe she mentally corrected, was there just in case it went less than smoothly. Circe did not have her…advantages, and she hated bringing her in on these hunts, but some near-fatal mistakes earlier in her vampire hunting had shown her that taking on these monsters by herself was likely going to shorten her career a great deal.

She was half a block from where she wanted to cross when a man stepped out of a tiny electronics store just ahead of her. Trinh felt an icy hand reach into her chest and squeeze her heart. A series of horrific images flashed through her mind. Those sparks of memories grew into a raging inferno at the sight of the man’s face.

“Trinh,” Circe said through her earpiece. “Trinh, the target is entering the park. Trinh, move your ass!”

“It’s him,” Trinh whispered.

“Him who?”

Trinh used her unbridled hatred to cast aside her fear and stop the trembling wracking her body. “Malone.”

“Christ! Trinh, we aren’t ready for him. Stick to the plan,” Circe pleaded.

Trinh watched Malone mount a black motorcycle and strap on a helmet. “No, I have to try. I might not get another chance.”

“Trinh, don’t! Goddammit!” Circe sprinted across the rooftop in hopes of getting a clear shot at Malone before her friend engaged him in a suicidal frontal assault.

Trinh watched the motorcycle speed away. Her eyes darted to an alley cutting between the buildings. She sprinted for the alley with the speed of an Olympic athlete, hoping to intercept Malone before he got away.

She did not think about her own life or even Circe’s. Killing Malone was her sole purpose for existing, and if it cost Trinh her life to end him, then she was willing to pay it a thousand times over.

Trinh burst out of the alley just ahead of Malone, twirling her shaolin meteor hammer over her head. Malone’s face registered a look of surprise just as she let the weighted end of the cable fly. The cord snaked around his left wrist. Trinh looped the loose end around an iron bench bolted to the sidewalk a split second before Malone’s momentum ate up the few feet of slack.

The cable snapped taut, ripping his hand off the handlebars and jerking him from the seat. The motorcycle wobbled a few times before falling over and sliding to a halt with a shriek of metal on asphalt.

Not wanting to give her enemy a chance to recover, Trinh freed her weapon from the bench, drew her .45 automatic, and began firing as fast as she could pull the trigger.

Malone recovered startlingly fast. He tucked into a roll the moment he felt himself ripped off his bike. Seeing the slightly-built individual running at him with a pistol drawn, he ended his tumble by putting his back to his attacker and hunkering down.

Round after round slammed into his Miguel Caballero, the bulletproof coat taking the brunt of the assault. Enough kinetic energy made its way through the jacket to give Leo a brutal beating. He leapt to his feet, drawing his .500 magnum with his left hand, as he reached for his sword with the other.

Trinh stared down the mouth of the enormous revolver and knew that her light body armor would do nothing to protect her against the weapon’s horrendous power. She discarded the expended pistol and stepped onto the cord attached to Malone’s wrist. His hand jerked down under the force. The revolver spit out its huge slug in a flash of fire and thunder, gouging a fist-sized hole in the street, inches from her right foot.

Yanking him further off-balance, she darted in, sword leading. Malone tried to punch her in the face with his sword hand, but she ducked beneath the hasty attack and cut at his thigh as she darted past. The sword slid through the jacket’s opening and cut deep into the flesh beneath.

With a savage growl, Leo turned, swinging the revolver to point at her head once more. Trinh jerked the cord in the direction of his movement and kept the arm in motion. The pistol roared, and the slug tore past her head close enough for her to feel its passage before it cratered the brick wall behind her.

Trinh’s sword flashed down and cut through the sturdy jacket sleeve and into the arm holding the lethal weapon. Leo hissed as he finally managed to draw his sword and intercepted her follow-up attack. The two blades collided with a resounding peal, sending shockwaves up Trinh’s arm.

With Malone now prepared for a fight, her slim chances of killing him dwindled to nothing. He was a vampire: faster, stronger, and able to withstand far more damage than she could. Trinh’s only chance lay in more than three decades of the most brutal combat training she could find and master.

Malone tried to leap away. Trinh yanked the cord on the meteor hammer, but she may as well have been playing tug-of-war with a small car. Leo ignored the cable cutting into his flesh and hauled back on the trapped arm, pulling his attacker closer. He lunged forward, stabbing with his sword, but Trinh twisted just inside the thrust and received only a shallow cut.

She used her forward momentum to spin past Malone and slashed with her sword, trading wounds with him. Leo made a backhanded slash as he twisted around, but Trinh ducked beneath the sword and kicked him in the stomach.

Leo staggered back a step and tried to bring his pistol in line, but Trinh rolled into a somersault and pulled the tether to foul his aim. She pointed the hand holding the meteor hammer at Malone’s face, touched a button on the device strapped to her wrist, and sent a stream of potent pepper spray into his eyes.

Leo recoiled and wiped at his eyes with his sleeve. Trinh lunged and thrust with her sword, but Leo brought his blade down and partially deflected it. Her sword bit deep into his stomach but missed the spine. Leo kicked out and caught her with a glancing blow.

The hit was still strong enough to stagger her. She wrenched on the cable to pull Leo off-balance enough to give her a moment to recover. Leo raised his sword to cut at the binding once again. Trinh let the line go slack. Without any tension on the cord, he would have a hard time cutting through it. Leo had come to the same conclusion. The blade flashed down, severing the high-tech nylon cord and the wrist trapped in its constricting wrap.

Raw fury blazed in Leo’s eyes as he rushed forward, seemingly oblivious of his left arm now ending in a bloody stump. He hacked at Trinh just as he had his own arm. Trinh was barely able to deflect the blow, but the power of the slash stripped her sword from her hand. She reached inside her coat for the Taser holstered beneath it, but she was not fast enough. Her hand closed on the stun gun just as Leo’s sword punched through her chest with the force of a tornado-driven chunk of debris.

Trinh stumbled away, desperately trying to draw breath. Leo raised his sword for a finishing blow. Circe emerged from the alley across the street and raised her rifle.

“Trinh, no!” she cried as she tried to acquire the vampire in her sights.

At Circe’s shout, Trinh looked across the street and tried to tell her to flee, but her lungs could not capture enough air to create words. She would likely get one shot and then Malone would kill her too.

Tires squealed as a panel van rounded the corner at a high rate of speed. Trinh and Leo’s eyes shifted toward the van as the driver gunned the engine. Leo’s face showed a moment of surprise before the vehicle struck him and sent him flying through the air.

The sliding doors flew open on both sides of the van. Two people wearing black combat fatigues and balaclavas leapt out, grabbed Trinh, and pulled her inside. Another waved to Circe and shouted for her to get in. Circe glanced at Malone, who was already stumbling to his feet, and ran for the van. She paused just a moment at Leo’s motorcycle before jumping into the vehicle.

The van’s tires screeched once again and accelerated in reverse. Leo made a staggering jog toward his fallen pistol, scooped it up, and managed to fire a single shot at the vehicle before it roared away and disappeared from view.

CHAPTER 8

To say I’m not on my ‘A’ game is a gross understatement. Lack of a proper feeding has left me slow and comparatively weak. I should be able to put this bloodling down without breaking a proverbial sweat no matter how excellent her fighting skills are, but between her combat prowess, my weakened state, and this goddam cord wrapped around my wrist, I am getting my ass handed to me.

I decide that I have had enough. Kicking my ass is one thing, but the bitch made me wreck my brand new bike. She needs to die. I steel my resolve and swing my blade. She thinks I am trying to cut the cable again and relaxes the tension on it. Just because I’m not a wolf doesn’t mean I’m not above chewing off a limb to get free from a trap.

My sword shears through the bone as well as the cord locked around my forearm. The cable falls away along with my hand and my jacket cuff. She stumbles back, faltering for just a second. A second is twice as long as I need. Finally, free of my reins, I lunge forward as fast as my legs will move. Even in my weakened state, it’s damned fast.

She tries to take my head but I bat her sword aside like it’s a pesky fly. I smile as my blade plunges into her chest. I have no idea who she is, but she chose the wrong
hombre
to settle whatever grudge she has.

I heft my blade to deliver a killing blow. A woman shouts a name from behind me: Trinh. I turn my head at the sound of her shout, screeching tires, and a roaring engine. I catch sight of the grille of a van before I’m suddenly airborne.

The world shifts into slow motion. I watch the buildings gliding by. I see another woman standing near my bike holding a rifle. Our eyes meet for a brief second before I shoot past. I’ve reached the apex of my arc and start to descend. My shoulder strikes the pavement first, my head an instant later. My helmet is a skull cap, just enough to keep me from getting stopped by the cops, and does little to dampen my impact. Inertia is in control and it isn’t ready to free me just yet. I tumble and roll a dozen revolutions before it releases me from its grip.

I scramble to my feet and make a staggering run for my pistol. I scoop up Shalonda and squeeze off a single round before the van reverses back onto the street and disappears. Only now do I focus on my wounds. I recover my hand and drop it and Shalonda into my jacket pocket. Pulling out my phone, I stab one of only a few numbers in my Contacts list with my thumb.

“Raj, are you in your office?”

“No, I left over an hour ago.”

“I need you to get back there ASAP and prep for surgery.”

“I’ll be there in ten minutes.”

Raj is a good man. He doesn’t waste time with a bunch of questions. I holster my phone and trudge back to my bike. It’s a good thing I have super strength, or I would have one hell of a time getting my Harley back on its wheels. I’m able to get the bike in neutral and start it with one hand. The gearbox complains about my not using the clutch, but it grudgingly goes into gear.

I pass several cop cars, their lights flashing and sirens blaring, likely on their way to the site of my ambush. It’s a short drive to the medical examiner’s office, but it gives me enough time to piece together what happened. Getting jumped in the middle of the street is odd enough, but being attacked by two women is beyond bizarre. I know I’m not popular with the ladies, but damn.

My attacker was Asian. I’m sure of that. Even if I hadn’t made out the shape of her eyes and skin tone, I could smell her diet of mostly East Asian cuisine. There was something vaguely familiar about her scent as well, but I can’t place it. It is the wispy shadow of a fragment of a memory. It bugs the hell out of me, but I don’t have time to chase it around.

The van full of people is yet another mystery. Were they working with the two women? It surely wasn’t coincidence, and they must have known what I was, or they would not have been in such a hurry to get out of there after mowing me down.

I have to put my investigation on hold as I pull up to the back door of the MEO. Making myself whole is now my top priority. Raj opens the door and waves me inside. I set my bike on its kickstand and hustle over.

“What’s going on?” Raj asks as I approach.

I reach into my pocket and pass him my severed appendage. “I need a hand with something.”

“Oh shit! Is this yours?”

“It ain’t Captain Hook’s.”

“Leo, I am not a surgeon.”

“No, you’re a medical examiner, which is kind of a doctor, and since I’m only kind of alive, I’m sure we’ll both do fine.”

Raj stares at my hand as he leads me back into the exam room and nods. “Yeah, okay. What do I need to do? Do you need anesthetic or anything?”

“No. Just sew everything together as best you can. I can do the rest.”

“You can do that?”

“It’s a theory.”

“Okay, but I’ve never reattached an amputation before.”

“I’ve never amputated any of my limbs before, so I guess we’re both getting our cherries popped tonight.”

Raj has me lay on an examination table as he retrieves a surgical kit. He unrolls the sterile towel containing his tools onto a small table and examines my injury.

“Holy shit,” he exclaims as he studies the deep abrasion on my stump. “This looks just like the injuries on our other guy.”

“Yeah, I think someone is going all Van Helsing on us. You let me worry about these hunters. You just get my hand back on so I can give them the bird with both barrels when I hunt them down and kill them.”

Raj has to cut me open a bit to get to the tendons. “There’s almost no blood. Are you doing that?”

“Yeah, it’s a neat trick to have when people are always trying to poke holes in you.”

“I bet. I can’t reattach any of the nerves or blood vessels.”

“Don’t worry about it. My body should be able to handle that as long as you can align the bones and tendons.”

Raj nods and starts suturing. I’ve been blocking out the pain since I lost my hand, but I can still feel the tug of the needle as Raj sews me up, especially as he reattaches the tendons. I know this is a laborious process, so I spend the time replaying everything about the attack in my head.

The ambush was straightforward, but it felt improvised, almost hasty. Why use such an obscure method of unseating me when she had a sniper presumably on the roof? A bullet, especially to the head, would have been far more effective and harder to recover from. She lost a lot of her element of surprise by lassoing me.

Granted, she was able to keep me off-balance by yanking my chain, but it was also a hindrance since she had to use one hand to keep control of it. She was an exceptional fighter. Her martial arts skills coupled with being a bloodling had put her, not on equal ground, but pretty close. She was a great minor league player squaring off with a mediocre pro, one who had been out drinking the night before and skipped breakfast.

Trinh, her partner had called her. I search my brain for a face to put with the name, but I come up blank. The name sounds Vietnamese or Cambodian. I haven’t made any enemies down there since ’68. Maybe a granddaughter carrying out her grandparents’ vengeance? Seems an awfully long way to go for a nearly fifty-year-old grudge.

She had an entire team. Or did she? I replay the sniper’s face in my mind as I went flying past her. She looked almost as surprised as I was. If she wasn’t expecting the van, then who the hell were they? Do I have two hit teams after me? How many people have I pissed off? It’s best I don’t answer that. It would hurt my feelings, if I had any.

“I think I’ve done everything I can,” Raj announces after more than an hour of suturing. “I hope it’s enough.”

“It should be fine, thanks. It’s probably best if you leave before I do my bit. My reserves are tapped out and this level of regeneration is going to leave me famished.”

Raj looks even more nervous than when I gave him my severed hand and told him to make like Dr. Frankenstein. He swallows a lump in his throat, nods, and makes for the door. I follow him out and climb onto my bike. I don’t think I will go into a feeding frenzy and eat Raj, but there’s no sense in taking unnecessary risks.

I wait until he gets in his car and drives off before focusing on my arm. My hunger spikes to a painful level as my body regenerates the nerves, tissue, and bones in my wrist. I play a little air guitar to make sure everything is working properly and send a quick text before firing up my Harley and speeding down the street.

My mouth is literally watering at the prospect of a full feeding, and my stomach is competing with my bike to see who can growl the loudest. So far, it’s a draw. The meal I have planned for tonight is a heroin dealer whose last bad batch killed three people. Katherine wasn’t able to prosecute thanks to a poorly-executed search warrant. It didn’t take me long to get the code I needed to set up a buy, thanks to my contacts in the criminal underworld. Sometimes, having friends in low places is a good thing.

I park my bike in the darkest corner of the parking lot and walk through the park. I stand beneath a streetlight and wait. I don’t need much in the way of acting skills to play the part of a jonesing junkie. I hear his footsteps and pick up his scent before he gets close enough to speak.

“Are you Larry?” he asks from what he thinks is the safety of the dark shadows.

My vision allows me to see him without a problem. “Yeah. You got what I want?”

“Come over here out of the light.”

I stride over to where he is waiting in the shadows.

“You wanted twenty bags of China White, right?”

I unclench my fists as I pull my hands out of my jacket pockets. “Actually, I am going to need a lot more than that.”

He starts to look a bit nervous, his eyes shifting from side to side as he tries to make sense of my changing the deal. “How much more? I might not have enough on me.”

A predatory smile creeps onto my face. “Oh, you have plenty on you for what I need.”

I move with preternatural speed. I am behind him in an instant, one hand clamped over his mouth in an unbreakable hold. The ring razor looped onto my other thumb makes a small incision over the carotid artery. I clamp my mouth over the wound before the first spurt of blood reaches the grass.