The Hunger Page 5

  Marcus growled into the night, his anger building, and with it the hunger that he had controlled for many days. Tonya and Gloria would not feed him tonight. He needed to kill something, and his thralls were too valuable for that kind of treatment. But he must be careful. It must be someone who would not be missed, and the body had to disappear. A shadow stumbled down the street, and Marcus focused his night vision to see a shambling hunched over man in dirty clothing, a paper bag grasped in one hand.

  No one will miss a wino, he thought, as he began to silently trail his victim.

  * * *

  The sun was just coming over the horizon when the 7:03 express from Atlanta came into the renovated Union Station in downtown Tampa. O’Connor had been able to sleep most of the trip in the comfortable seat, but had woken an hour before the dawn and stared out into the darkness as the train made its way south. He had watched the lights of towns and lone dwellings go by the windows, wondering about the people that lived there. Their ordinary lives passing by, with no knowledge of the terrors that inhabited the fringes of the world.

  O’Connor had an easy time spotting the welcoming committee on the concourse. Picking out a black cassock and white collar among the few people waiting for family and loved ones was relatively simple. I wonder if this will be the red carpet, he thought, or the cold shoulder. He knew that the Bishop of the Diocese of St. Petersburg would not let him come into town without questioning his motives.

  O’Connor grabbed his carpet bag and walked to the exit of the car, making his way down the steps and out onto the concourse. The young priest was looking at a photograph in his hand, looking up at the people coming out of the train, then back to the photo. The priest did a double take as O’Connor walked out, put the photo into a pants pocket, then hurried over to O’Connor with a bowed head.

  “Your excellency,” said the young priest, going down to one knee with his hand out to accept the hand of the man he had come to meet.

  “No longer,” rumbled O’Connor in a resonate voice that had kept the attention of congregations through the years. “I’m officially just a Monsignor, though I prefer to go by the name of John.”

  “But you were the Archbishop of Washington excellency, on your way to becoming a Cardinal.”

  “That was a lifetime ago, my son,” said O’Connor. “Now I am a simple priest, father….”

  “Johnson. Timothy Johnson,” said the priest, standing up and holding out a hand, this time in the traditional sign of greeting between two men of almost equal rank. O’Connor took the hand in a firm grip.

  “John O’Connor. Glad to meet you. You have a car I assume?”

  “Yes Monsignor. I’ve already arranged for your bags to be at your hotel. Can I take that?”

  “No,” said O’Connor. “I need the exercise. Lead on.”

  Father Johnson led the way through the station and onto the street to stop at a late model Taurus with a clergy plate on the front. He opened the passenger door and motioned for O’Connor to get in, then closed the door behind him, moving around the car to get into the driver's seat. With a beep of the horn and the twist of the wheel Johnson accelerated into the flow of traffic, to the honking of horns and curses of other drivers.

  “You’re not from around here, are you?” asked O’Connor after saying a quick prayer.

  “No sir,” said Johnson with a chuckle. “I grew up in the City, New York. Lost the accent at Notre Dame.”

  “You know you could have stayed at the Diocese Cathedral in St. Pete,” continued Johnson. “You didn’t have to spring for a hotel room.”

  “Then I would have too many people asking questions of me,” said O’Connor. “You know how people like to talk.”

  “About vampires,” said the young priest. “That’s what everyone has been talking about the last couple of days.”

  “No comment,” said O’Connor with a frown. “My mission is my mission. And I require no cooperation. Only that people get out of my way.”

  Johnson turned his attention back to the road as O’Connor gave a satisfied grunt. The young man might think me a nutcase, thought O’Connor. But being thought a nutcase serves me well.

  * * *

  Bishop Wislowski’s Tampa office was nowhere near as opulent as his abode at the Cathedral in St. Petersburg. But the Bishop was known as a very hands on ruler of his domain, and an office in the other major city of the Diocese was keeping in character. He stood up as O’Connor was ushered into the room, coming around his desk and holding his right hand out. O’Connor went to one knee and took the Bishop’s hand in his, bringing the signet ring of the church hierarchy to his lips.

  “Have a seat, Monsignor,” said Wislowski, moving back to behind his desk, as O’Connor took a seat in the upholstered chair set in the center of the room.

  Like the chair of a victim of the inquisition, thought O’Connor. And where are the inquisitors?

  “I’ll get right to the point, Monsignor O’Connor,” said Wislowski, looking over his steepled fingers. “I don’t want you here. The Council of American Bishops doesn’t want you here. The police and the city officials would not want you here if they knew of your presence.”

  “But I have the permission of the Holy Father,” said O’Connor, playing his trump. “He puts more faith in me than all of the rest of you combined.”

  “Because he was raised a peasant in a land of superstitious peasants,” said the Bishop. “A man who was raised with stories of vampires and werewolves with his mother’s milk.”

  “Are you so sure that they are untrue?” asked the priest. “The Holy Father believes that there is evil in the world. Do you not?”

  “Oh yes,” said the Bishop with a nod of his head. “There is evil enough in the world without bringing fantasy into the mix. Men have become experts at the doing of evil through the centuries. I am sure that no imaginary creature of the night can compare with some of the men in our jails. Or roaming our streets.”

  “The Holy Father believes in my quest,” said O’Connor, standing up from his chair to walk toward the desk. “As long as he gives his blessing to this enterprise you have no say in where I go or what I do.”

  “I knew you would have an attitude,” said the Bishop, standing himself and glaring at the priest. “Yes, you have the permission of the Holy Father to engage in this witch hunt. And I will put no obstacles in your way. Nor will I allow any of the resources of this Diocese to aid you in this insane quest. Do you hear me, Monsignor O’Connor?”

  “I hear you, Bishop Wislowski,” said O’Connor, placing his hands on the desk and leaning to bring his face close to that of the Bishop’s. “I ask for no aid or comfort from your precious Diocese. But I also will still put my life on the line for you and your parishioners, as well as all of the other innocents who live in this city.”

  “Just remember what I said,” cautioned the Bishop, drawing back from the intensity of the man. “If you land afoul of the authorities it is on you to get yourself out of the trouble you caused. If you land in jail then you will have to make bail, or rot in a cell until they decide to let you go.”

  “Fine with me, your Excellency,” said O’Connor. “I prefer to work alone. Are we through here?”

  “The audience is ended,” agreed the Bishop. “You know I don’t approve of your methods, but I have no power to make you leave. So go with God my son.”

  The Bishop held his ring hand out one more time, over the desk. O’Connor took the hand and brought the ring to his lips, showing his respect for the office if not the man. Then he turned and walked out of the office, his footfalls sounding heavy on the polished wooden floors.

  O’Connor picked up his rental car outside of the offices, a late model Thunderbird. It was a short drive to the hotel near I4, and O’Connor was in his room minutes after the end of the audience. His laptop was out of the carpetbag in an instant, even before he had taken the time to unpack his other bags. With a couple of keystrokes he was at the Vatican Website. A password and a c
ouple of more strokes granted him access to the hidden areas of the site, and the database that he was one of the few on Earth privy to.

  * * *

  Tashawn Kent didn’t have access to any sophisticated databases. But his instincts were normally good enough to get him what he wanted. Especially since he had become one of the undead.

  “I don’t understand, Tashawn,” said his boy Marvin as Tashawn pulled himself out of his coffin. “We had it going up in Philly, man. With you as enforcer we had no problems with any of the other players. So tell me again why we’re here in this little burg.”

  “I want her blood,” said Tashawn, flexing his twenty-one inch thick arms. He had tried to stay in shape in the years since the Eagles cut him from the squad. It had been difficult to keep his defensive tackle’s body in that kind of shape. But since crossing over it had been no problem at all.

  “Her blood will make me stronger. Her blood will make me invincible.”

  “My god,” said Marvin. “You can already lift a luxury car over your head. How much stronger do you need to be.”

  “I am still a child, brother,” said Tashawn. “You know the thing about living forever?”

  “Sure,” said Marvin, twisting the top off a bottle of beer and offering it to his lifelong homeboy. Tashawn shook his head and Marvin brought the bottle up to his own lips to take a swig. “You live forever as a vampire. But most of you actually die before the first year. Cause you’re stupid.”

  Tashawn bared his fangs and laughed as his friend blanched at the display.

  “I don’t mean you’re stupid, brother,” said Marvin. “I mean your kind is when you first start walking the night. So for most of you the eternal life thing is so much BS.”

  “But we can gain the strength of the vampires we kill and drain,” said Tashawn. “We get stronger, and gain their experience too.”

  “But she hasn’t been around all that long,” said Marvin. “You told me that yourself. Why not find someone with more time under their belt?”

  “Because they might be too much for me,” said Tashawn. “And with her it’s personal.”

  “She made you a vampire,” said Marvin. “I thought you liked being a vamp. I mean man, you are the shit on the street. Weren’t no one would take you on.”

  “Do you want to join me?” said Tashawn, baring his fangs again. “I could bring you over easy.”

  “Not me man,” said Marvin, backing up till his back hit the motel room wall. “I like being alive, man.”

  “Your choice,” said Tashawn. “The bitch didn’t give me a choice. And she was trying to do me for good. If something hadn’t interrupted I wouldn’t be a vampire. I’d be rotting meat in a Philly graveyard. So it’s personal, and I want to return the favor to her.

  “But enough of that,” said Tashawn. “I’m hungry. Let’s go get me something to eat.”

  Marvin nodded his head as he put on his jacket. Tashawn could smell the fear in his friend. The fear that one day he would be on the menu of his old friend. Maybe that day will come, thought Tashawn. But not now. Now it was nice to have a mortal who could think for himself, unlike the thralls he had seen in other vamps.

  Chapter 3

  “You’re gonna love this, Lieutenant.”

  Jamal Smith hated hearing those words as he entered the station house. He had only been up for an hour, after only sleeping four hours during the height of the day. Sometimes he thought that the only sunshine he saw was that of sunrise over the bay area. He turned a baleful glance over at the young female detective, standing there with a folder in her hand held out in offering to her superior.

  “You read it to me, Justine,” he ordered as he took a sip of the strong coffee that was part and parcel of police work on the overnight shift. Smith tried to adjust his blurry eyes to take in the paper lying on his desk. Vampire? Strikes Again? stated the headlines.

  “We got a match back from the FBI and one of the sets of prints we sent them. The smaller set from the dumbbell and the back door knob.”

  “The woman we assumed?” said Jamal. “And I guess we got a match on the victim’s as well?”

  “Yes sir, and it matched the ID that we came up with from the remains,” said Justine, brushing a stray blond strand from her forehead. “But the woman is the interesting one.”

  “OK. Give me the short version.”

  “We have the prints of one Lucinda Taylor, AKA Lucinda Porter. Porter being her maiden name. Born in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Yeah, the chocolate town. She got a BS in History at the City College of New York and was working on her Master’s at Stony Brook when she started having trouble.”

  “What kind of trouble?”

  “Police called to her apartment for several domestics. She refused to press charges on her prince of a husband. And then he threw her out on the street. Fell in with the wrong crowd and got picked up on some drug charges. Then she got hooked on Heroin and ended up doing tricks on the street for her drugs. Several arrests for hooking.”

  “God,” groaned Smith, thinking of his own daughter at Florida A & M. Such a promising future, lost to drugs. “So how’d she get down here? And what’s her connection to Julio Garcia?”

  “None that I can figure, lieutenant,” said Justine. “But here’s the part that gonna mess with your head.”

  “Hit me,” said Smith, taking another sip of coffee.

  “Ms. Taylor was killed by her pimp six years ago.”

  “What the fuck,” said Jamal. “Are they sure?”

  “Sure enough to have pictures of her laid out on a slab in the Buffalo morgue. DNA match, fingerprints, the works. She was killed, alright. But her fingerprints have turned up at other murder scenes up and down the East Coast.”

  “So how’d they end up in Tampa? If she’s laid out in a New York grave.”

  “Actually Hershey,” said Justine. “Her parents flew her home for the funeral. And I have no idea.”

  “Because she rose from the dead,” said Jeffrey DeFalco, walking up to the pair.

  Smith looked the agent over with a sneer. But tonight the FBI man looked the part. Clean pressed suit over starched shirt and dark tie. His eyes looked clear as well, like he had gotten a good day’s sleep and had stayed away from the bottle.

  “Don’t give me that undead crap, agent,” said Smith. “There’s got to be a rational explanation.”

  “So you tell me why her grave was found empty the day after the funeral,” said DeFalco. “You come up with a rational excuse.”

  Justine shook her head in agreement, holding the folder out for Smith. The detective took the folder and laid it on his desk, open to the photo of a pretty girl in a casket.

  “Sick people robbing a grave,” said Smith. “It happens.”

  “And two years later that sick fuck came back,” said DeFalco, “and stole three cubic yards of soil from the gravesite.”

  “And why would they do that?” asked Smith.

  “Because the undead must sleep in the soil in which they were laid to rest,” said DeFalco, a wild look in his eye. “And our girl is smart. She wanted to have lots of the soil she needed, so she could have a number of bolt holes, now and in the future.”

  “I don’t know, DeFalco,” said Smith. “Sounds pretty nutty to me. But here. You have a look over this folder. It came from your agency but it’s part of our case now. So you can have access to it.”

  “Thanks,” said DeFalco, sticking out a hand to refuse the folder. “I’ve memorized it. You might want to also, so you can understand what you’re dealing with.”

  DeFalco turned and walked away, muttering something under his breath.

  It’s bad enough, thought Smith, to have to deal with the normal freaks who called in information to the cops. But to have to deal with a Fed who’s one of them. Smith shook his head again, then looked up at the expectant young detective whose training he had taken upon himself.

  “Let’s deal with the impossible later, Justine,” he said. “Let’s make our plans
for tonight. Now where do you think our boy is going to strike?”

  * * *

  The thing that really sucked about being a vampire, Lucinda thought as she woke up, were the vivid horrifying dreams that haunted her each and every night. And they replayed like a movie of her life, one after another after another, in sequence, each and every night. Lucinda shuddered as she recalled tonight's.

  She thought about the dream for a moment. How she had woken in total darkness, reaching up and hitting hard wood with her fingernails. She could feel the panic begin to take hold of her. She scratched at the covering overhead and kicked her feet. She didn’t know where she was, but it wasn’t a place she wanted to be.

  And then the second feeling came over her, even stronger than the fear. The hunger. The ravening hunger that gnawed at her guts, and drove every other thought out of her mind. She grimaced as she thought of how the hunger controlled her in those days, completely suborning her actions to her instincts. She struck out with her fists, and was surprised when her hands went completely through the strong thick wood overhead. Surprise again turned to fear as musty earth fell through the hole.

  With strength born of desperation, and something else that she couldn’t name at that time, she pulled the wood overhead into a series of small slats and splinters. Then she dug at the earth above. She could smell the stale air of the coffin, for she had figured that much out, and couldn’t understand why she wasn’t short of breath. Then she noticed that she wasn’t even breathing. She redoubled her efforts and dug and dug with her claw like hands. Then a hand broke through into the air, and she pulled herself out of the ground, spitting the dirt out of her mouth and wiping it from her eyes.