Vampires 3 (20 page)

And what I saw was something out of a nightmare.

James P. Storm was in there, hunched over Veronica, his face buried into her torn and bloody neck. Veronica’s eyes were closed and she could have been dead.

As Storm turned reluctantly away from her neck, I shot him with the crossbow.

Had he been any further away, I’m certain I would have missed. But, in this case, it was like shooting fish in a barrel. Or a vampire in a coffin.

As it was, the small arrow whipped through the air and plunged deep into his chest, exactly where I assumed its heart was.

What happened next still gives me nightmares to this day.

James P. Storm leaped back, staring down at the bolt protruding from his chest. He gripped the fletchings and pulled.

The bolt came out, along with a geyser of black blood that splattered the small room and turned immediately into steam. Indeed, the bloody hole in his chest gushed steam as well.

He stumbled backward and collapsed against some shelving, and as he hissed and steamed and bled, I ran over to Veronica and dragged her across the floor and out the door. I ripped off my jacket, wadded it up, and used it to plug the gaping wound in her neck.

With the jacket pressed firmly against her, I watched in horror and fascination as James P. Storm continued to hiss and steam. He looked at me confusedly, opened his mouth to say something, and then pitched forward onto his face.

A few seconds later, he turned to dust before my very eyes.

Chapter Eleven

I was sitting in Detective Sparks office at the Central Station on Vallejo Street.

He and I had gone over and over the events at Borders Books and Music. He didn’t like my answers and had only grudgingly started to wrap his mind around the fact that something very strange had indeed gone on in his city.

He rubbed his eyes and drank some more coffee and stared at me for a long minute.

“
So you really think this thing was a vampire?” he asked.

“
I think this thing was a monster. But call it what you want.”

“
A monster?” he said.

“
It killed her parents and tried to kill her. It had its face buried in her neck and was drinking her blood. And when I shot it with the arrow, it turned to dust before my very eyes. What would you call that?”

“
A long night of drinking.”

“
No one was drinking, detective.”

“
The Crime Lab analyzed the remains. Human DNA. They’re telling me that these remains are at least a hundred and fifty years old. They’re still testing them.”

I said nothing. What the hell was there to say to that?

Sparks said, “And you shot him with a silver arrow?”

“
Yup.”

“
And he just started smoking?”

“
Like a chimney.”

“
He say anything?”

“
I think he was too busy smoking and dying,” I said.

We were silent some more. Veronica was in the hospital. Apparently, she was going to make it. Gladys and her husband were on their way up to be with her. At least Veronica had someone.

“
So what am I supposed to do with all of this?” asked Sparks. He waved at the reports on his desk.

“
You’ll think of something,” I said. “It’s why you make the big bucks.”

“
They don’t pay me enough for this shit.”

“
So am I free to go?”

He nodded wearily. “I’ll be in touch, Spinoza. We know where to find you.”

“
Lucky me,” I said.

And left.

* * *

It was late evening, and I was sleeping fitfully in my office when someone knocked on the door.

I had been dreaming of my son, of course. Once again, we were in the forest and I was holding his hand, only this time his hand wasn’t charred. This time it was healthy and alive and soft and warm, and my little boy was looking at me with joy and love in his bright eyes.

This is different,
I remembered thinking in my dream.
Something is different.

My son nodded and swung my hand and I sensed great peace from him. He nodded again and laughed and squeezed my hand. I sensed something else. I sensed that he wanted me to move on. I had been about to ask him
how
when the knock came again.

My hand went automatically under my arm, gripping my pistol. I was a little jumpy these days after my run-in with the vampire.

“
It’s open,” I said, reluctant as hell to release the image of my healthy and happy son.

Veronica opened the door and stepped inside. She was wearing tight jeans and a tank top. A far cry different than the loose-fitting boy jeans she had been wearing a week earlier at Borders. Her dark hair was still cut boyishly short and even from here I could see the red scarring around her neck. Her torn throat had needed a lot of stitches. I didn’t see any stitches now. She seemed pale and sickly and not as confident as she had been in her pictures. No surprise there, since she had nearly had her throat torn out.

“
Can I talk to you?” she asked.

“
Sure.”

She shut the door behind her, turned, and sat across from me in one of my client chairs. I released my grip on the pistol.

“
I wanted to thank you for saving my life,” she said. Her voice sounded stronger than she looked.

Despite myself, my old shyness returned. I forced myself to power through it.

“
Well, it was drinking your blood,” I said. “It was the least I could do.”

“
Where did you learn to shoot a crossbow like that?”

“
Maybe I was Robin Hood in a past life.”

She grinned, and seemed about to rub her neck, but stopped herself.

I asked, “So he really was a vampire?”

“
Of course.”

She said it so matter-of-factly that my next question died in my mouth. I was left stumbling over words until I finally said, “So how many of them are out there?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know, but I don’t think many. The ones who are really old and smart rarely kill anymore. They find other ways to get blood.”

“
So, um, how many have you killed?”

“
Just three. Storm would have been the fourth.”

“
And he’s the one who killed your parents.”

“
I hated him for so long.” She paused, composed herself. “I spent the past three years hunting him.”

“
How did you find him?”

“
I’m a hell of a detective,” she said.

“
Maybe you could work for me someday.”

“
Maybe,” she said. “Anyway, if you meet the right people and make the right friends, yeah, there’s a whole scene out there.”

“
Scene?”

“
Vampire scene.”

“
Of course.”

She leveled her stare at me. Her eyes, I saw, were lightly bloodshot. “But you took care of him for me.”

“
Spinoza the Vampire Slayer,” I said. “So he’s really dead?”

“
Of course, you saw him turn to dust. That’s what happens to them when they die.”

I nodded. “Of course. Silly of me to ask.”

Veronica’s neck was surprisingly healed. Just a big red blemish. She saw me looking at her neck. Now she reached up and touched it self-consciously.

“
It’s hideous,” she said.

“
It’s not that bad,” I lied.

“
You’re a bad liar. The doctors tell me that it’s healing surprisingly fast.”

“
Ah, youth,” I said.

“
Sure. Youth.” She smiled again and stood. She reached out a pale hand across my desk. “I just wanted to thank you, Mr. Spinoza, for saving my life. I wouldn’t be here today if it weren’t for you, and a monster would still be out there killing innocent people.”

“
All in a day’s work,” I said, and shook her shockingly cold hand. I nearly winced at her icy flesh.

She saw my reaction and released my hand. “They’re always cold now, since the attack.”

“
I, um, hadn’t noticed.”

“
You’re a bad liar, Mr. Spinoza.”

I told her to call me if she ever needed any help or needed a job, and she assured me she would. At the door, she looked back at me and seemed about to say something, but decided not to.

As she turned to leave, I saw a fresh tattoo above her low-riding jeans. It was a tattoo of a black dragon.

I sat back in my chair and put my feet up on my desk and laced my hands behind my head, certain that I had just seen my second vampire.

The End

Spinoza returns in:

The Vampire Who Played Dead

The Spinoza Series #2

Available now

Kindle
or
Nook

Return to the Table of Contents

VARNEY THE VAMPIRE

by

James Malcolm Rymer

OTHER BOOKS BY JAMES MALCOLM RYMER

Varney the Vampire

The String of Pearls

The Black Monk; or, The Secret of the Grey Turret

Ada the Betrayed; or, The Murder at the Old Smithy

The First False Step; or, The Path to Crime

The Wronged Wife: or, The Heart of Hate

VARNEY THE VAMPIRE

Published in 1847

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Varney the Vampire

Editor’s Note:

Varney the Vampire
is a big book. It’s over 320,000 words long, or about the equivalent of three good-sized Stephen King bestsellers. The terms “vampire” and “vampyre” are often used interchangeably in the following novel.

PREFACE

The unprecedented success of the romance of "Varney the Vampyre," leaves the Author but little to say further, than that he accepts that success and its results as gratefully as it is possible for any one to do popular favours.

A belief in the existence of Vampyres first took its rise in Norway and Sweden, from whence it rapidly spread to more southern regions, taking a firm hold of the imaginations of the more credulous portion of mankind.

The following romance is collected from seemingly the most authentic sources, and the Author must leave the question of credibility entirely to his readers, not even thinking that he his peculiarly called upon to express his own opinion upon the subject.

Nothing has been omitted in the life of the unhappy Varney, which could tend to throw a light upon his most extraordinary career, and the fact of his death just as it is here related, made a great noise at the time through Europe and is to be found in the public prints for the year 1713.

With these few observations, the Author and Publisher, are well content to leave the work in the hands of a public, which has stamped it with an approbation far exceeding their most sanguine expectations, and which is calculated to act as the strongest possible incentive to the production of other works, which in a like, or perchance a still further degree may be deserving of public patronage and support.

To the whole of the Metropolitan Press for their laudatory notices, the Author is peculiarly obliged.

London Sep. 1847

CHAPTER I.

"How graves give up their dead. And how the night air hideous grows with shrieks!"

MIDNIGHT.—THE HAIL—STORM.—THE DREADFUL VISITOR.—THE VAMPYRE.

The solemn tones of an old cathedral clock have announced midnight—the air is thick and heavy—a strange, death like stillness pervades all nature. Like the ominous calm which precedes some more than usually terrific outbreak of the elements, they seem to have paused even in their ordinary fluctuations, to gather a terrific strength for the great effort. A faint peal of thunder now comes from far off. Like a signal gun for the battle of the winds to begin, it appeared to awaken them from their lethargy, and one awful, warring hurricane swept over a whole city, producing more devastation in the four or five minutes it lasted, than would a half century of ordinary phenomena.

It was as if some giant had blown upon some toy town, and scattered many of the buildings before the hot blast of his terrific breath; for as suddenly as that blast of wind had come did it cease, and all was as still and calm as before.