Psalm of Vampires: Chapter Ten
Wolfie's Lair
Charlie stayed behind, too. Having the two of us on the bus gave the passengers a sense of security, even though Charlie and I were nearly as defenseless as they were.
When Moreland and Owens appeared together through an opening in the tree line, Owens was gesticulating while talking. Moreland appeared to be listening without commenting on any of his rants. Her scimitar was stained red again. When someone on the bus announced their approach, the bus erupted in cheers.
“Two for two,” declared Moreland when she saw me on the bus.
“She beat me to it,” Owens seemed to complain.
“What is that thing?” I asked Owens, looking at his gun. “The Wurdulac normally absorb bullets like they’re food.”
“This is Cordelia. Her secret is a clip of five elaliite bullets. They work on vampires, they’ll work on you, and they work on these things. I’ll admit. I didn’t know it would work at all when I shot the one about to pounce on you. Gotta shoot it in the eyeball. Lucky shot.”
“I’ve never heard of this,” I said.
“I’ve been at this awhile, Mourning. Vampire hunting.” He looked at Charly, then Moreland, making sure they weren’t about to attack, I guess. “Met a dude in Serbia about a decade ago. He claimed that the Russians used elaliite to wipe out thousands of vampires in East Europe before the Iron Curtain was dismantled. Afghanistan, too. Elaliite is a mineral only found in meteorites. Well, there ain’t nothing new that’s a tough sell when nothing works, so I tried it. Sho’nuf, ack!” Owens made a face and grimaced like he was shot to death.
“Add that to my reasons to hate your ass,” said Charly.
It was an awkward situation having a vampire hunter on the bus with three vampires. A love fest, it wasn’t. And now I knew that he’d be completing the trip with us to Wolfie’s lair. There was a distinct possibility that Wolfie would recognize him from somewhere and kill him on the spot.
“Even dicks can be heroes,” I said to Charly, pretending that Owens wasn’t there. “We don’t sometimes know the real makeup of a person until a crisis hits, and let’s at least give the dick credit, his instinct was to help.”
I finally looked at Owens, who said, “And yours was to draw that creature away from a bus full of people. I’ll admit. I learned more about you in that one minute than I would have in a hundred police interviews. That wasn’t a gamble on your part. It was sacrifice. A sacrifice you shouldn’t a needed to make if I had acted sooner than I did.” He was shaking his head, probably beating himself up for not shooting at the Wurdulac while it was on the bus. But I knew he was in a moment of surprise and awe. I couldn’t hold that against him.
I didn’t know what to say to his surprising comment. I didn’t share that I had a hunch Cordelia was an ally when he told me it was my worst enemy. Or that it would have been nice if he had taken a shot. I wasn’t thinking about any of that when I alerted the Wurdulac to my presence while it was stalking my friends on the bus. If I had thought about it earlier than I did, maybe I could have avoided a nasty scare.
But Owens was right. Although I had no intention of sacrificing myself, I was thinking that the Wurdulac might leave my friends alone if I could get it to chase me instead. The Wurdulac tend to focus on family destruction for some reason. It could have found me, killed me, then moved on to feast on the bus. But it might instead have been satiated by my death and moved on, the end of my family being the end of its quest.
And there was this: By buying my friends on the bus some extra time, Moreland might be able to do her thing.
“Owens,” I said, quoting a famous movie, “this could be the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
“Not unless one of you fuckers turns me.” One side of his thin lips angled up into an Owens smirk.
I nodded at that, but we all felt it. A corner had been turned. Like I said earlier, Wurdulacs have that effect on people.
Owens surprised me again when he spent the rest of the trip mingling with the influencers. He was trying to get to know them. The word quickly spread that he had saved my ass, so their attitudes toward him adjusted accordingly.
I didn’t know what might become of Owens in the aftermath of his leaving the scene of a crime where several law enforcement personnel were lost to slaughter and a police helicopter crashed into trees on the side of an interstate. Owens hadn’t bothered to report in. He simply left the scene as if it hadn’t happened. Maybe, I thought, he was that torn up over it. People do weird things when terrible things happen. I just couldn’t know. Our détente was too new for me to press him on it. Besides, was it even any of my business?
We could see smoke from a growing fire caused by the crashed helicopter as we traveled north to Wolfie’s lair. A long black ribbon of rising smoke continued to announce the crash miles later.
Finally, we all gathered at the table in the middle of the bus one more time as Raygun took over driving duties, which meant we were approaching the cabin.
“This is probably where the werewolf myth comes from,” Owens said to me as we sat down. “Please tell me werewolves are a myth.”
“They’re a myth,” I said. Moreland and Charly nodded.
“Thank god,” said Daphne. Moreland gently petted the back of Daphne’s head, making me realize that they’d had plenty of time to talk while sitting together earlier. If anybody could infuse Moreland with a dose of magnanimity, it was Daphne, and I was witnessing the test of that theory. I didn’t need to bother wondering what they were talking about. It wasn’t the subject that mattered. It was just Daphne being Daphne. I began to wonder almost seriously if she could tame a Wurdulac.
“So, here’s what happened with the kids at the frat house,” said Owens, getting right back to business. “Garrison is probably still in the area checking things out. It’s where he was when I had to call him over to your place before I hitched a ride on Bloodsucker Bus Lines.
“As it stands now, there were several witnesses who saw a perfectly painted Mercedes delivery van for an unnamed online shopping service parked outside the frat house for a long time.”
“Why unnamed?” I asked. “We all know who it is.”
“The department won’t release the name of the company because it’s afraid of lawsuits. Nothin’ can defund the police faster than a corporate jackal with lawyers and an axe to grind. Anyway, one of the witnesses noticed that the driver slash delivery man had an impressive set of canines that would put yours to shame, Mourning.”
That’s what I get for showing them off so frequently during livestreams, I thought to myself. It had always been part of some unspoken pride that my incisors were significantly bigger than Charly’s and Moreland’s. Okay, not always unspoken. Sometimes during the heat of an argument with Moreland, I’d say something like, “What are you gonna do, bite me with your tiny teeth?” But I never brought it up with Charly. I liked Charly.
“Now, these vans don’t sit anywhere for more than a few minutes. So I guess that’s what the witness noticed first. As the delivery guy is heading back to his van,” continued Owens, “this same witness sees him and notices he’s got blood all over his uniform. He must have stared a long time because the driver snarled, really exposing the fangs big time, and then laughed and said, ‘Happy Halloween!’ before getting in and driving away. And hey. A kid that age, he’s gonna go back to the house figuring the van driver was just in the spirit of the Halloween season. Turns out, the frat house next to his has four dead guys, probably at the hands of the van driver.”
“Sounds like a shitty thing to ask, but why only four dead frat guys?” asked Daphne.
“That’s all that was there in the house at the time,” replied Owens. “It’s amazing there were even four there. Saturday afternoon. College football. Most of the kids were at the game. I don’t often say this, but I’m at a loss for what to do next. I haven’t even called in…” Owens looked south. “…that.” I didn’t think he had, but this confirmed it. “I wouldn’t a walked away from it if someone had lived through it. But calling it in meant me not coming along for your joy ride to the next Addams Family fun house. That’s more important for now. But it’s almost like this killer wants the world to know he’s a vampire.”
If you wanted to get under Moreland’s skin, reporting that a vampire wanted to out himself would do it. Her glow nearly doubled when Owens said that. The incandescence surrounding her was usually almost impossible to detect in sunlight, but in the darker bus, it was noticeable. Now, it was more so.
“They’re gonna find that killing field and wonder where the hell you are, Owens,” said Charly.
“The manhunt for you is gonna be epic,” I added. “We’re barely ahead of them.”
“Owens is right, though,” said Moreland. “Which means that either our killer is crazy, vampire or not, or wants to trigger a new war with humans.”
“Vampire or not?” asked Owens. “It’s a fuckin’ vampire. Ain’t no ‘not’ here.”
“We don’t know that yet,” I said.
“I know it. You know it,” said Owens. “I never would have come at you in your library if I wasn’t certain.”
Charly nodded. “The rest of the Atlanta P.D. is operating on the assumption that it is not a vampire. Owens’ partner is doing the same. So if it is not a vampire, that base is covered.”
“Fair enough. We’ll assume it is,” I said. “Enough evidence points that way.”
“I can’t work in the dark, people,” Owens said, looking at the three vampires sitting with him. “I need to know every suggestion you have on who might be behind these killings. You’re not being traitors to your kind when you do this. You know that, right?”
“I think this is the part where I tell Owens about the Longtooth clan,” I said, looking at Moreland, who shook her head and sighed.
So, I told him. I didn’t tell him that I thought that Longtooth or a member of his clan was a suspect. But I gave him a short history of the dynasty. When I told him that Wolfie was probably a Longtooth, he said, “So we’re on our way to the suspect’s house? Good thing I brought Cordelia.”
“Raygun would tell you he’s not a suspect. Based on the fact Wolfie’s got a heart,” I said. “Wasn’t happy about daddy beating up on those kids, beating up Raygun.”
“Or he just wanted his house,” said Owens.
“House isn’t much to have,” I said, “According to Raygun. Just a shack in the hills. We don’t even know if he’s still there.” When I said that, the bus turned off an exit and followed a narrow two-lane road up a forested slope. As our conversation relaxed into more mundane affairs — the colors of the autumn trees, a small deer on the side of the road, the growing canopy that darkened the surroundings, the road turned into a switchback. The bus almost felt alive as it heaved its way along the growing angle of slopes, its gears grinding and churning their way up.
I hoped that Wolfie would recognize the driver when the bus appeared on his property. Otherwise, things could get silly.
“And if he goes on the attack first thing?” asked Owens when the bus pulled to a stop.
“He’s not a Wurdulac. Plus, it’s three against one, four if we count Cordelia,” I said. “We keep everyone on the bus, maybe leave Charly behind if he’s okay with that so there aren’t any ugly surprises, and you, me, Ray, and Moreland check things out.”
This far up the mountain, I would have expected more sunlight, but it almost looked like evening. A dense covering of trees surrounded a dilapidated wood shack with a failing roof and slipping wood side panels covered with moss, dried mud, and cobwebs. We exited the bus, Raygun in the lead. The quiet was disarming. I didn’t even hear birds. Beautiful lips of fog across a valley serenaded ledges of sylvan hillsides.
Raygun approached the door. The small window next to it was cracked in a formation that looked like a huge old-fashioned keyhole, with a round, fully broken area at the bottom edged with shards of broken glass of various lengths pointing into a round break in the window big enough to climb through if you were willing to risk getting sliced by arrows of jagged edges. A spider had turned the broken area into a home with an extravagant network of webbing. The place reeked of urine and dead animals. Or dead something.
Owens stood on one side of me, Moreland the other, as we trailed Raygun so closely we could have kissed his hair. The metal screen door that served as the home’s entrance was ajar. Raygun tapped it gently. “Wolfie?” he said timidly into a dark interior. No response. “Wolfie.” Louder this time, but still timid. Raygun tapped more loudly three times with his knuckles. The door pushed inward as he did this, but then flew open violently, startling all of us and nearly sending me backward to the seat of my pants.
A large, grey vampire bat flew out of the doorway. A Lyroderma lyra. I swear it laughed again as if it was mocking us for being there. This one, though, was smaller than the one at the estate. I looked up as it fluttered away into the treetops.
“Fuck my life,” said Moreland, unsheathing her scimitar.
Raygun turned his head to look at us, asking us what to do without uttering the question. Owens pushed him aside and entered the cabin with Cordelia leading the way. The rest of us waited a beat, anticipating violence. All was quiet, so I stepped in, followed by Moreland, then Raygun.
“Wolfie?” said Raygun, running to the middle of the room where a ridiculously tall vampire dressed in nothing but tidy whities was slouched in an old green Lazy Boy chair. Black blood was oozing from his eyes.
“Hey, boy,” Wolfie wheezed. “C’mere you pissant, gimme me a hug before I die in yer fancy mansion.”
“No!” I yelped. “Don’t touch him.”
Raygun was lunging for him, but Moreland grabbed one of the straps of his overalls to hold him back. “Let me to him,” Raygun said dispiritedly.
“It’s okay buddy, I wasn’t thinking,” said Wolfie. “He be right now — you stay back.”
“You can talk normally to us,” I said to Wolfie, trying to discourage him away from the Georgia hill country dialect.
“Y’ain’t part of his pack?” asked Wolfie.
I knelt next to him on one knee and displayed my fangs in the vampire way. “We’re here to help,” I said before he had a chance to overreact. Like I’ve said, it’s always a fight or flight thing with the vampire greeting, the flight typically being an effort at accommodation.
“Well,” Wolfie coughed, “In the grand tradition established by my friend here, you can have this place when I go.”
Raygun said, “You can’t go.”
“They got me, buddy. I’m done for.”
“Who got you?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“An upyr. Oh, I feel like shit.” His calling it an upyr suggested to me that Wolfie was East European or Russian.
I nodded. “A scout flew out the door when we arrived.”
“A scout?” wheezed Wolfie.
“Yeah. The vampire bat? You musta seen it,” I said.
Wolfie was struggling to speak. He didn’t look quite how Raygun had described him to me. He was very tall, but very thin. His cheeks were hollow, his skin nearly grey instead of blue. He hadn’t been feeding regularly. His grey pallor suggested that this was true long before the Wurdulac got to him. Parts of the skin on his chest were flaking off. He had Longtooth’s massive canines though, which curved inward, their points curling under his bony chin. He had pointed ears like Longtooth, too. And no eyebrows, another common Longtooth trait.
“I saw it. Welcomed it into my home like it was one of my own. Scout, you say?”
“Yeah, that’s what the upyr do. They send a scout, then they follow.”
“Shit,” grunted Wolfie.
“When did you get bit?” I asked.
“Been about three weeks, I think. Didn’t get sick for at least a week later.” This meant he had lasted longer than we usually do. A tough old bird. “Why would their scout hang out here for three weeks after they attacked? Fucker. I thought he was lookin’ after me.”
“They try to confirm the kills. But you weren’t feeding much before this,” I said.
“Is it that obvious?” he asked.
I nodded.
“Not a lot of people in these parts,” explained Wolfie. “There was a family in a cabin downstairs.” He spoke through an anguished grin. “I call down the slope downstairs.” He laughed through a cough. “Anyway, there was about ten of ‘em. The missus was like a rabbit. Couple a litters of kids down there. I had a good relationship with a couple of the older ones and the father. They never knew I was feeding from them. About three months ago I found the place all tore up and stains of blood but no bodies. I didn’t think at all of it being upyr. You know? Thought they were all dead and gone. But I guess that fine family got sucked into their big ass-ugly upyr bellies.”
“This may sound like a stupid question,” said Moreland from behind me. “But how did you establish a relationship with a family? You know, with these?” She pointed to her chin and drew imaginary canines with her finger.
“I talked with one of the kids first. Youngins believe any story you give ‘em. Told her I was a werewolf from London. Ever seen that movie?” He coughed again. “Great flick. So she tells her parents, and eventually they come lookin’ for me. Dad blasts me with his shotgun before any introductions. Some greeting, huh? Got me right in the ticker. Now, you here, blast to the heart might put you down for a few hours, but our kind, we’re a little like upyr. Our bodies nearly feed on buckshot and bullets and what have you. Strangest thing, huh? Anyways, I just said to the father, I says, ‘Hey I understand. Scary teeth”. His throat ejected a hoarse laugh. “You gotta do what you gotta do to protect your family and all that. After that we was friends. The upyr will be comin’ after the rest of us soon, I reckon.” Wolfie meant the rest of his clan. And Longtooth.
I told him that I had talked to the eponymous Longtooth just a couple of days ago and he seemed fine.
“Not for long,” replied Wolfie through another series of coughs.
“If he’s been bit, and he’s still healthy, but knows his days are numbered,” said Owens, “maybe that sends him on a killing spree?”
I stood up, wiping the dirt from the floor off my knee. “I dunno,” I said. “Maybe.”
“Say,” said Wolfie after rubbing his eyes. “You ain’t Atticus of the Argeadai, are you?”
“People call me Jade Mourning these days.”
Moreland said, “After a blue rock I gave him that he used to wear around his neck, but that was several centuries ago. For his grief.”
“Oh.” The word choked out of Wolfie’s throat. “What kind of rock, my dear?”
“It was a beautiful blue jade,” she said.
“Lost during the Franco-Prussian War,” I said.
“Fuck’s sake,” Owens mumbled.
That seemed to bring a sudden alertness to Wolfie. “A little person,” he hissed. “You cavort with little people?” he then asked, looking at me.
“Quite frequently,” I said.
At first, his alarm seemed decorated with anger, but then his mood changed. He looked at Owens, then me, then Owens again. “The Atticus of the Argeadai is a descendant of an Olympian. The most powerful vampires in history. His uncle was a direct descendent of Heracles, who destroyed upyr in copious numbers and watched over the little people.”
“The little people?” asked Owens.
“You and your kind. Heracles protected you from the upyr. That he did.”
Owens smirked. “That was a long time ago. Now he’s just a pain in the ass.” I wondered if his bosses at the precinct appreciated his consistency.
Wolfie looked at me and said, “And them upyr are back. They killed your uncle and won’t stop hunting you until they kill you, too.”
“Yeah, I know,” I replied.
“I am very sorry that I cannot help,” Wolfie said.
“But why did they come after you, Wolfie?” I asked.
“The Longtooth have been at war with them for centuries.” Well, that confirmed the answer to the question. He was a Longtooth. “But I thought they were gone. I said this already, didn’t I?” He spluttered some blood as he spoke, forcing me to jump backward.
Wolfie wiped his mouth. “Sorry. Looks like I’m about done here.”
“Thank you for what you did,” said Raygun. “I never did thank you.”
“You thanked me. Gave me your home.”
“Wasn’t much,” said Raygun.
“It was enough.” Wolfie smiled slightly, exposing blackened teeth.
We stayed with him for about an hour. Owens tried to fish out more information about the Longtooth clan, but Wolfie didn’t give him anything to work with. Wolfie didn’t like Owens any more than I did. Owens was hard enough to like, but the fact that he was constantly seething over the existence of vampires made it next to impossible to want to accommodate the man.
Finally, Wolfie ordered us to leave. “The scout has seen you,” he said to me. “All a’ ya’. If it were just up to me, I’d say, sure, you and your little people on that bus just hide out here for a bit. Don’t know where you’d stuff a dozen a’ ya’, but that don’t matter no more anyways cuz that scout gonna summon up another one of them wretched creatures and turn all them little people into upyr dust.”
He was right, of course. We had to get out of there. He was also right about the infeasibility of cramming a dozen people into the shack. For the first time, I really noticed the place. It was bad enough that it smelled like urine and dead flesh, but the floorboards were peeling at the entrance of the cabin, the other window on the side of the cabin was also broken, and the small tan area rug I was standing on looked like it had been feasted on by swarms of moth and mice, with small holes all over its faded, ornamental pattern.
There was a small stand with a round glass top holding a television set that looked like it could have come out of the 1980s. The TV even had an old-fashioned rabbit-ear antenna and dials on its front panel. The screen was so dusty that I was sure that the set hadn’t been turned on in decades. Little wonder that when Raygun described his activities during the years they had been apart, Wolfie’s response was little more than a blank stare and a wheezing cough. I doubted that he even knew what the internet was.
We promised Wolfie that we’d come back in an hour with provisions, but he insisted he wouldn’t be there in an hour.
And then he died.
Raygun, shaken up, asked if we could bury him. Of course, we all agreed. Then, I noticed that Moreland was no longer in the shack. “Where did Moreland go?” I asked Charly.
“Beats me. I didn’t even notice her leaving.”
“Shit,” I said.
If you ever have gotten that sinking feeling that you know something bad has happened, well, this was it times a dozen.
I ran out of the cabin toward the tour bus. About a dozen bodies were lying on the ground face up, positioned with great care amongst the scrub and brush of the area surrounding the bus.
I don’t know about you, but that sinking feeling never lets me down.
Take control of your Halloween reading schedule.
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