"You know, as sure as I am that these killings are the work of vampires, the
'Psycho Surgeon' angle isn't one I'm entirely unconvinced of." John spoke, poking the remaining bits of bacon and scrambled egg around on his plate before forking them into his mouth.
Andrew sat opposite, one arm resting against the top of the red vinyl backrest and the other lazily holding the handle on a cup of coffee. The cheap fluorescant lighting of the late night greasy spoon diner only served to make Andrew look even paler than normal. He was almost translucent at this point. He lifted the coffee mug halfway to his mouth and gave a noise in response, beckoning John to continue his line of thinking.
"Listen, every vampire I've ever had the displeasure of meeting has been two things." John said, gesturing with his fork for emphasis, "Careless and messy. They feed, they leave a body in a heap, and off they go to ruin someone else's night or hit up some gaudy nightclub." He jabbed the fork back onto his plate. "They don't tidy up. They don't stage anything. They don't take trophies or make art installations out of what's left. They treat humans like takeaway food - wrappers and all." John leaned back, giving Andrew a pointed look. "Present company excluded, obviously."
Andrew raised his coffee cup in a mock salute and gave him a nod.
"Why thank you, always nice to be appreciated.""My point is, this feels like more than just a new Vampire coven feeding on unsuspecting college students. I've been trying to keep tabs on any movements in the city and I've barely turned up anything."
"Always the bearer of good news, John. Are you telling me we've got nothing to go off of?""Not quite. Everyone makes mistakes." John wiped his mouth with a napkin, then reached into the inside pocket of his coat and slid a creased evidence photo across the table. Andrew lowered his cup enough to glance at it. It was of a body - drained, pale, and dumped behind what looked like a run-down bar's service entrance. John tapped the corner of the photo. "See that? There." A smudge of something dark on the victim’s shirt, near the collarbone. "That's motor oil. Fresh. Industrial grade."
Andrew arched a brow.
"Interesting, but how exactly is this a lead, John?"He leaned forward , lowering his voice. "Three bodies so far have had the same oil on them. Same type. Same viscosity. That narrows it down to a handful of spots in the city, my bet is that's where you'll find your vampires, or at least someone who can lead you to them."
Andrew finished the last of his coffee, setting the cup down and sliding the cup away from him with a light push.
"Let me guess. It's not exactly the Four Seasons.""More like a chop shop that failed its inspection six times in a row!" John said. "Out in Charlestown. Still operating after hours. Windows blacked out. No staff willing to talk about anything. And every time I get near it?" He slid the photo back into his coat. "I feel the hairs on my arms stand up. Someone's set up shop there. And it ain't Joe the mechanic."
Andrew sighed through his nose, stood, and reached for his jacket.
"Well then, sounds like a very polite group of young gentlemen waiting to be educated. I'm sure they'll be just jumping to help an upstanding citizen like myself."John smirked, pulling a cigarette from behind his ear. "Try not to get yourself staked before breakfast."
"No promises." Andrew said, tossing a few bills onto the table as he moved to leave.
"But if these idiots really are as sloppy as you say, maybe I'll get lucky."John lit the cigarette and exhaled. "Lucky? With vampires? Sure. Stranger things have happened."
Andrew paused at the door, hand on the frame.
"You have no idea."
Andrew approached the chain link fence like a bored zoo-goer approaching the tiger enclosure. He peered through the spaces in the metal towards the auto-shop, surrounded on all ends by towering piles of junk and destroyed cars - a twisted king's fort standing in the middle of a sprawling modern hamlet.
This was going to be harder than usual. If you could call anything 'usual' after being asleep for 20 years. Without Eclipsaria he felt like he was missing an arm, he hadn't properly gone into a fight unarmed since Venice - and that was back when Italo Disco was in full swing.
No time to reminisce about the
'good old days'. Every minute his trusty blade was in the hands of evil was a minute too long.
He gripped onto the chains, and with a mighty pull launched himself over the fence, landing on the other side as a blur. He dashed to and fro between blockades under cover of darkness, inching closer and closer until he had a clear angle of the front of the garage. The door was open and a shower of sparks was spraying out, searing the ground.
The workers didn't look like vampires, at least not from their work ethic. It'd take a lot of motivation to get a vampire - even a newly turned one to a lift a finger in pursuit of anything but themselves. Andrew suspected they might be Thralls, but for all he knew they could just be down on their luck humans working overtime for powers they couldn't possibly understand.
Men in overalls ran back and forth through the garage, they were working furiously - carrying back and forth various mechanical parts. Some were installing them into the vehicles, mostly they were removing parts. A regular chopshop, probably some wannabe gangster turned vampire who hadn't lost his taste for material goods.
Finally the boss man sauntered out of his office at the back - eyes burning red, and teeth practically dripping with the blood of some poor fool no doubt already halfway to the pearly gates.
For a moment, Andrew considered the stealthy approach. But where was the fun in that? This was his homecoming, it was time to party.
The worker gasped, almost dropping the entire weight of an engine block on his foot as the bonnet slammed shut in front of him with a mighty thud. The figure of a man with black hair streaked white suddenly appearing crouched on top of it.
"Good evening. Starter for 10 - thrall, or no thrall?"The worker's shocked expression shifted to vitriol, he tossed the engine to the side with a mighty thud that caught the attention of the other workers and bared his fangs. They were tiny nubs compared to Andrew's - or for that matter any true vampires, and his eyes glowed only a faint red rather than the burning shade that stared back into them from on top of the car.
"Thrall then!" This made things simpler and more complicated all at the same time. At least he didn't need to hold back.
Andrew rose smoothly to his full height. In the same breath, he snapped a kick upward, the arc of his leg catching the thrall under the jaw and launching him off his feet. As the creature reeled backward, Andrew followed through with the momentum, bringing the leg back down, flipping forward, and driving his opposite heel squarely onto the crown of the thrall’s skull. The impact cracked against the concrete, pinning the creature's head to the floor with brutal finality.
The surrounding thralls froze. Tools hung motionless in their hands; wrenches, grinders, half-lifted engine parts. Each of them staring from the shattered concrete to the pale figure crouched atop their fallen companion.
Andrew kept his boot planted on the thrall's skull, body coiled in a half-crouch. Slowly, he turned his head over his shoulder. His eyes burned red, fangs glinting, fingers curled into razor-sharp claws. He was something closer to a jungle predator than a man now.
"Who's next?"As if someone had struck an unseen bell, the garage exploded into violence. Every worker in the shop snapped their heads toward him, lips peeling back to reveal the same small, malformed fangs. All of them thralls.
Typical, Andrew thought.
Give a vampire a chance at cheap labour and he'll build himself a militia.The first thrall lunged with a heavy wrench. Andrew slid under the swing with effortless grace, catching the man's ankle as he passed. A quick twist sent the thrall crashing to the concrete. The wrench clattered from his hand, spinning upward - just long enough for Andrew to snatch it out of the air.
He swung it around in a clean arc, burying the metal head into the jaw of a second thrall leaping at him. The impact sent the creature sailing sideways into a nearby tool cabinet, the doors rattling violently as he hit and a plethora of various tools spilling out and onto his unconscious body.
Another came at him from the left, bringing a hammer down in a brutal overhead strike. Andrew rolled backward across the hood of a half-dismantled car, the hammer smashing into the metal where his leg had been a heartbeat earlier. He landed on the other side, back now to a thrall raising an angle grinder toward his spine.
Andrew snapped the wrench behind him just in time. Sparks screamed in all directions as spinning metal met steel. The wrench split in two with a sharp crack.
He pivoted right as the makeshift shield broke apart, flinging one half into the gut of an approaching worker. The man folded over with a grunt. Andrew caught the grinder's blade between both hands by the flat edges. The disk shrieked, spinning furiously as the thrall used all his strength to push the machine down toward his face.
Pain flared instantly. Andrew sucked in a sharp breath as blood welled between his fingers. A quick glance at the grinder's body confirmed what he already suspected: the blade was silver.
Of course it was.
His answer came in the form of a savage kick straight between the thrall's legs. The man yelped and crumpled, dropping the grinder. In the same motion, Andrew snapped a soccer-style kick upward, volleying the grinder over his head and across the shop.
It sailed into a thick chain hoisting a wheelless car above the floor. The chain snapped with a loud whip noise. The vehicle's back end dropped like a guillotine, slamming down onto a cluster of thralls below and sending bodies sprawling in a tangle of limbs and debris.
The whole shop shook with the impact - an improvised alarm clock announcing that Andrew Bennett was very much awake.
The office door slammed open so hard it rattled on its hinges.
"What the fuck is going on out he-?!" the boss started, but froze mid-sentence at the sight of his shop. Behind him, two other vampires sat comfortably at a stained metal table, feeding from a limp body splayed out like they were businessmen enjoying some body sushi. The boss's eyes flared. "Better question - who the fuck are you?!"
Andrew smiled.
"I think you've got something of mine."The boss was on him first. He was big, fast, overconfident, and ugly. Andrew barely had time to twist aside as a clawed hand carved a trench through the air where his sternum had been. The impact of the missed blow shattered the doorframe behind him, wood splintering across the floor.
Andrew countered with a sharp elbow to the ribs, but it was like hitting stone. The vampire snarled and backhanded him across the face, sending Andrew skidding across the concrete and into a stack of tires that toppled down over him.
He pushed himself upright, spitting out a streak of blood and wiping his mouth with his thumb.
"Right." He muttered to no one but himself.
"One of those nights."The other two slammed into him from either side. Andrew ducked low, letting them collide with each other before springing upward to drive both palms beneath their jaws, snapping their heads back with a crack. They stumbled, hissing, regrouping faster than humans ever could.
One seized a chain hanging from the ceiling and whipped it toward him. Andrew caught it mid-swing, but the vampire yanked hard, pulling him off-balance and stumbling towards him. The second sank claws into Andrew's side, drawing a ragged gasp from him. Blood bloomed through his shirt.
Pain flashed in his vision. The silver from earlier was still burning in his palms and now his side was comrpimised. But Andrew pushed through it.
He twisted the chain around his forearm, braced a boot against the floor, and hauled the first vampire forward. As he stumbled into range, Andrew drove a knee into his gut, doubled him over, and then smashed his head against the raised hood of a car. The metal caved from the impact.
The second lunged again. Andrew grabbed a dangling work lamp and swung it up into the vampire's face. Glass shattered, sparks bursting and burning across his features. The creature screeched and reeled backward.
Before Andrew could press the advantage, the boss caught him from behind in a bear hug, lifting him clear off the ground and squeezing. Bones creaked. Andrew clawed at the vampire's arms, his vision tunneling as he felt consciousness fading.
"I've hit the jackpot tonight boys!" The boss growled. "Rico's gonna love this one! It's promotion time for me!"
With one last surge of energy, Andrew bucked his body forward, lifted both legs, and kicked off a wall - slamming the back of his skull into the boss' nose with a wet crunch. The grip loosened. Andrew dropped, rolled, and before the vampire could recover caught him by the lapels and flipped him straight into the windscreen of a half-gutted Jeep.
The glass spiderwebbed and the boss dropped limp, letting out groans as he struggled in vain to pull himself from the wreckage.
The two underlings came at him again, but Andrew was already moving. He snatched a length of rebar from a scattered pile, spun it once, and cracked it across the first vampire's temple. As he reeled, Andrew pivoted, driving the rebar through the shoulder of the second and pinning him briefly against a support column.
The pinned vampire screamed; Andrew ripped the bar out and swung it back around, laying both creatures out with two clean, brutal blows.
Finally there was relative silence. Just Andrew's ragged, breaths and the whirring of now broken machinery.
He staggered, pressing his hand to the wound at his side. It had already begun the healing process, but god damn did it hurt right now. A groan sounded at his feet, the boss, half-conscious and trying to crawl away.
Andrew planted a boot on his back.
"Not so fast."The vampire hissed, coughing blood up onto the concrete floor. "Who he fuck are you?! Wh...what the fuck do you want? I'm small time! I'm no one!"
"My sword." Andrew said calmly.
"And the idiot who stole it.""I don't- I don't know anything about that!" the boss sputtered.
Andrew shifted his boot slightly. Pressing more weight down onto his spine.
"You know something, or you know someone who does."The vampire hesitated. Andrew didn't raise his voice to ask again. He didn't speak at all. He just pressed down a little more, and the boss let out a sharp, panicked gasp as his ribs began to crack against the concrete.
"Look! Please!" The vampire babbled, "I can't-I can't just give him up! You don't get it - Rico will tear me apart!"
"Rico isn't who you should be worrying about right now." Andrew said.
"I am."Finally the boss's resolve cracked like an old floorboard. "He owns a club!" the vampire blurted. "That's where he keeps it! A place downtown called Violets! You can't miss it! Purple lights. That's all I know, I swear!"
Andrew lifted his foot off the man's back. The boss immediately curled into himself, coughing blood and wincing in pain.
"See, was that so hard?" Andrew said, brushing away the dust, blood, and grime from the fight from his jacket sleeves.
"You've been very helpful. And I don't say that often to scum like you."The vampire swallowed, voice trembling. "S-so we're good? You're not gonna kill me?"
Andrew stared down at the pathetic crumpled heap of a man..
"Not yet, but if Rico is the one who turned you then your time is very, very limited. I'd book that Disneyland trip if you haven't already, time to start ticking things off the bucket list."He drove a sharp punch into the side of the vampire's temple, dropping him against the concrete in an instant.
The auto shop was a wreck, but something tugged at Andrew's curiosity. He drifted toward one of the gutted cars, popped the hood, and peered inside. Cars had never really been his area of expertise - he'd never enjoyed riding in them, let alone learning how they worked. Give him a horse and he’d happily cross continents; force him into a bus and he'd get out at the next stop.
Still, this looked wrong. Even to him.
Too many wires. Far too many tubes running through the frame like veins. He traced the tubing deeper into the vehicle, following it past the dashboard and down beneath the passenger seat. With a flick of his wrist, he tore open the seat's underside, revealing a hidden compartment.
Inside lay rows of blood bags, neatly stowed, the disconnected tubes waiting like hungry mouths.
Andrew frowned. Why would anyone need blood circulating through a car? What purpose could it possibly serve? He retrieved several bags, stuffing them into his jacket and examining the labels on the few he kept in hand. Nothing unusual. Human blood, standard issue.
A mystery for later perhaps, but a welcome find. It meant he wouldn't have to rob a blood bank for a while.
With that, Andrew stepped out into the night. He was more battered and bloodied than he'd thought he might be by the end of this, but Eclipsaria wasn't far now. He could feel it.
Cyrania
Guardian Angel Haruki
Captain Uni
Azure Bubbles
xVampire3go
D3AD ST4R
tadcfnaf
PalmerEldritch
Sep
Zeus23
