chapter 2
The sun is rising in the east, chasing away the night and all the things that dwell within it. Including myself.
I sigh and let the heavy blackout curtains fall back in place. I have yet to develop a fatal allergy to sunlight, but it does not feel pleasant upon my skin, and the minutest exposure hurts my eyes, even when I wear the darkest of my sunglasses. I pace back and forth uneasily. I am weary, and the wound in my shoulder throbs. I know I should allow myself to regenerate, but there is too much on my mind to surrender to the petite mort.
The events of the night's hunt have done much to disturb and, yes, excite me. I can't shake the image of the white-haired hunter from my mind. I must know more - who is he? What's his name? Where does he come from? Why is he here? Is he a friend? An enemy? Something in between?
If I have learned one thing from my existence, it's that knowledge is power. This is why I forced myself to learn how to use a computer. Pretenders have a problem with electronics. Perhaps it's because machines are things of human making, or perhaps it's simply too difficult for them to break centuries-old habits, but most of them refuse to keep abreast with the latest advances in the sciences. That's why they surround themselves with human servants; it guarantees that they can exploit technology without ever having to interface with it directly.
I unplug my laptop from its recharger and place it on the card table that serves as my desk, jacking the modem into the phone line. The LCD flickers into life as I turn on the juice, typing in my password as I go. I take out the hands-free headset and plug it into a port on the side of the laptop. I type in an address and hit the ENTER key. The screech of the computer modem fills my skull. I grimace and spin down the volume on the earpiece.
A computer-generated image fills the laptop's LCD. It's a three-dimensional picture of a man's head, perpetually rotating in cyberspace through three hundred and sixty degrees. The head is transparent and where the brain should be there is a mass of cobwebs. As the head spins and tilts, the strands of the spider web shimmer with electric blue foxfire and purple heat lightning.
I turn the volume up on the earpiece and hear a short buzzing sound, kind of like a cross between the rings of a doorbell and a telephone. Suddenly a smaller rectangle opens up within the upper right hand corner of the screen, revealing a man in his late twenties with a shaved head, the folds and creases of a human brain tattooed directly onto his bald pate. As if this was not adornment enough, there's a third eye etched upon his brow. Upon magnification, the center of the tattooed eye turns out to be a perfectly circular hole in his skull.
"Who is it?" The voice speaks before the lips move, like that of an astronaut circling the moon. Although I can see the tattooed man thanks to the digicam mounted on his computer monitor, he can't see me.
"It's Sonja," I reply, identifying myself.
The bald man's broad lips pull into a wide smile. "Sonja! Long time no see - so to speak."
"Back at ya. How's the virtual world treating you, Webhead?"
He shrugs bare shoulders covered in spider-web tattoos. "I was scheduled for a second trepanation, but the dude who was going to drill me got cold feet."
"Bummer."
"Yeah, but you didn't log on for small talk. What do you need?" He reaches off-screen to retrieve what appears to be a defused mortar shell.
"What do I always need you for?"
"Besides the hot monkey sex?" he leers, firing up the bong.
I snort good-naturedly. It's part of our ritual banter. "In your nightmares, kiddo! I need a search done - newspaper archives, police databases, the discussion groups that cater to true crime and serial killer buffs, that kind of thing. I'm looking for unsolved homicides involving decapitations. Oh, and filter out those with known sexual assault."
Webhead lifts an eyebrow, his interest piqued. "Time frame?"
"The last five years."
"You want me to charge it to the Swiss account?"
"Sure."
"You got it. I'll beep you when it's ready."
The PIP disappears, signaling our business transaction is at its end. I log off and stare at the blank face of the laptop's display for a long moment. There is no guarantee that Webhead will turn up anything of any real use to me, but it would be a start. Whoever the mystery man I ran into in the alley might be, it's clear he has his moves down. And you don't get that smooth without practice in the field.
I yawn and strip off my leather jacket, draping it over the back of the chair, one of the few pieces of furniture in the loft I've made my base of operations. Its getting harder for me to locate suitable space to crash out in during the day - most of the old warehouses are in the process of being renovated into yuppie condos.
I kick off my boots and drop onto the old mattress that serves as my bed. The ticking is stained and torn, and there are no bedclothes. Not that it matters. I never feel cold.
The ache in my shoulder pulls at my consciousness, urging me to surrender to the petite mort. I can already feel my blood pressure dropping, plummeting like a stone hurled down an empty well. My heart slows its beating. My lungs fold in on themselves like paper lanterns. I close my eyes, only to be swallowed by the dreamless void, and I am still as death and...
The sun is down.
I know this because my eyes are open again. I lay there, flat on my back, my hands folded in repose atop my breastbone, and wait for my heart to resume its pumping. I emerge from death, as easily as another woman would climb from a bath, feeling rejuvenated and restored. The pain in my shoulder is gone, the bone completely mended, the flesh bearing only the slightest trace of a scar.
I reopen my laptop and find an email with an attachment awaiting me. The file Webhead has compiled keeps the printer busy for over an hour. Most of it consists of archived newspaper accounts of badly decomposed bodies found in ditches, but that's not all.
There's a series of articles from the Portland and Seattle papers detailing "ritualistic" murders committed in 1995 by a killer dubbed the "Headhunter" because of his (or her, as the reporters were Politically Correct enough to point out) removal of the victims' craniums.
An unusual aspect of the Headhunter's killing spree was that all but two of the victims remained unidentified, and those two had each been listed with Missing Persons for several years. The killings, which transpired over a four, month period between several major metropolitan areas in both Oregon and Washington, ended abruptly in April of 1995. To date, the seven murders remain unsolved, the cases still open.
In May of that same year, three murders occurred in Chicago, the modus operandi bearing an eerie similarity to those in the Pacific Northwest. These slayings were attributed to the so-called "Head-Man."
In the spring of 1996, Toronto was terrorized by a faceless killer known only as the "Skid Row Butcher,"
who took the heads of four victims in the span of six weeks. During 1998 and most of 1999, several headless bodies were found at rest areas along major Eastern Seaboard turnpikes, although the various investigative agencies involved didn't connect the murders.
Of far greater interest to me are the FBI files Webhead hacked into. While local law enforcement never saw a pattern amongst the various slayings, the same did not hold true for the Feds. Although J. Edgar's boys never announced to state and metropolitan law enforcement agencies that a serial killer with over twenty notches on his belt was on the loose, that has not kept them from compiling a dossier. The Bureau's codename for the killer is "Harker."
I skim over the Bureau profiler's by-the-numbers assessment of Harker's make-up: white, middle-aged, male, above-average intelligence. So what else is new? The autopsy reports on the victims are far more interesting. There's a marked similarity in the forensic evidence in every case. Some of this uniformity is due to the manner in which the bodies were mutilated, but that's not the only reason.
Despite the fact the victims vary greatly in sex, age and race, all of the bodies proved so badly decomposed upon discovery it was impossible to tell what mutilations were done before or after death. The only thing the forensic reports say for sure is that each victim was shot then decapitated. The link between the various killings lay within the ballistic report: silver-jacketed .38 slugs were retrieved from each and every body, and it was the Bureau's opinion that Harker himself had manufactured the ammunition.
The fact that the killer could afford to have bullets made using precious metals placed him far outside the Bureau's normal experience. At this point two Special Agents, a man and a woman, were called in to help expand the investigation. Reports written by these Special Agents show a mixture of bafflement and grudging respect for Harker, not to mention an undercurrent of genuine disquiet. However, the agents' apprehension didn't appear to be generated by the acts of the killer they were investigating insomuch as by the background information they uncovered about the victims.
Shortly after the Special Agents filed their reports, a memo from high within the Bureau ordered them to withdraw from the case and to keep the existence of Harker secret from the public and, indeed, all other branches of law enforcement.
This last bit does not surprise me in the least. I've long suspected that select officials within the FBI and CIA, along with their opposite numbers throughout the globe, know the truth about the monsters of ancient legend who walk unnoticed, if not exactly unseen, amongst humankind. It's much easier, and far safer, for those who know the truth to look the other way whenever possible, blaming the growing incidences of missing children and unsolved murders on anonymous serial killers rather than werewolves and vampires. Whether these high-ranking politicos are acting in the best interests of the human race, or under orders from inhuman masters, is another question altogether.
I take the printouts and carefully feed them into the only other technological luxury I have allowed myself: a crosscut paper shredder. As I watch the hard copy of the FBI files turn into confetti, I have no doubt in my mind that the stranger with the white hair and the Bowie knife who shot me is their so-called "Harker." But who he is, and why he's dedicated himself to hunting vampires is another matter... one I intend to get to the bottom of.
****
He stumbled across the first hint of the Blue Woman's existence on, of all things, a computer BBS frequented by minions - those debased humans who had willingly enslaved themselves to the undead.
There were numerous postings from the likes of "NecroPhil" and "renfield236" reporting sightings of a mysterious female who was rumored to be a vampire slayer of great ability. Given that she was often spotted in different cities on the same day, he had assumed the Blue Woman was nothing more than an urban myth; a post-modern folied deux, similar to the mass hysteria that birthed the Satanist Daycare Trials of the last century. Especially, considering how unstable minions tended to be, it was reasonable to assume the Blue Woman was nothing more than a punishing mother projection born of psyches tortured by subconscious guilt.
The minions spoke of her the way children whisper of the bogeyman, and for good reason. According to the reports, the Blue Woman was Anglo, African-American, and Asian. She was tall and short, fat but thin. Some even claimed she was a pre-op drag queen. She was all of these things, yet none of them; all the descriptions were equally valid and equally dubious, since no one who actually laid eyes on her ever survived to tell the tale.
The very mention of the Blue Woman scared the living shit out of those who trafficked with the undead.
Knowing the power of myth, he doubted much of what was credited to her was true. But then again, he had also assumed she wasn't real at all until the night before.
He had to find some way of meeting her. Granted, she might not want to renew their acquaintance, considering that he'd put a bullet in her. Still, he had to try. This was the first time he had crossed the path of a fellow vampire slayer. And it was possible she might know something about the whereabouts of Blackheart. He refused to contemplate the possibility that the Blue Woman might have already killed the vampire. He was determined to reserve that pleasure for himself.
The moon looks down on the park's carefully maintained nature trails, and bike paths with all the warmth and expression of a baked fish. I move through the shadows, heading towards the lake, the liquid heart of the city. As I hurry along, I can make out furtive shadows moving between the trees and shrubbery along the trail. These do not concern me, as I recognize the figures haunting the dark to be more of a distinctly human, and decidedly carnal, nature.
In the moonlight the water looks as black as oil. A huge weeping willow hugs the bank, its verdant tresses dipping into the moonlit water, like a longhaired woman peering at her own reflection. A frog, startled by my passing, leaps into the water with a splash. I part the green curtain and step inside the natural canopy.
The willow's inner sanctum is darker than the night outside, not that it makes any difference to my eyes.
"Jen?" I find myself whispering, even though there is no need. "Where are you?"
"At your service, as always, dear cousin."
I tilt my head upward in the direction of his voice. Jen is nestled in the crotch of the tree, feet dangling in mid-air, grinning down at me like a laterday Puck. I wonder how he managed to scale the tree wearing five-inch platform heels.
Jen is slight of build, standing no more than five-seven, with graying hair kept in a medusa's coil of braids decorated with ceramic beads. With his heavily mascaraed eyes, matching rouge and lipstick, skin-tight crushed velour pants, and pectoral of gaily painted finger bones about his neck, he looks like a demented transvestite Peter Pan.
"I have a use for you."
"All things have their uses, even those of us trapped between the natures," he replies, smiling flatly.
"I seek a man."
Jen rolls his eyes and grins lewdly. "So those rumors I heard about you are true, eh?"
I choose to ignore his remarks. "He is a stranger to me. He is in his late twenties, early thirties. His hair is long and white and he keeps it in a ponytail. He dresses all in black and favors western clothes. I'm talking Johnny Cash, here, not Garth Brooks. He carries a pistol that shoots silver bullets, a Bowie knife with a silvered blade, and there are silver caps on his boots. I want you to find him and tell him that I wish to parley."
Jen shifts about uneasily. "What matter of man is this stranger?"
"He is a hunter."
His eyes narrow. "A hunter of men?"
"A hunter of those who were once men."
Jen's eyes go from gun slits to open windows. "Have you lost your mind?!?"
"Don't argue with me! Or would you rather go without a protector?" Jen scowls and quickly looks away, but does not reply.
"Answer me! Do you serve me or not?"
Jen turns back to face me, his voice tight with rage. "You know I must serve you. I have no choice."
"That's bullshit! There is always a choice."
"Not amongst those born damned."
It is my turn to fall silent. "Forgive me, cousin. I misspoke." I lower my gaze in ritual shame.
Jen nods slightly in acceptance of my apology, but does not look me in the eye. After a long second he finally returns his gaze to mine. "Are you sure this is the course you wish to take?"
There is something in his voice that gives me pause. I stare hard at his face. It is as immobile as a kabuki mask, save for a slight tremor at the corner of his left eye. In the years since we first met, I have learned to read Jen as easily as I once read dear, deceiving Chaz. I can see he is hiding something from me. And the cold black thing coiled in the back of my brain knows exactly what it is.
"You know who this man is!" The words drop from my lips like heavy stones. Jen shakes his head in adamant denial, his braids clattering like wooden wind chimes. "I never said such a thing!"
"You didn't have to," I reply. "Who is he, Jen?"
"Honest, Sonja, I - "
I yank him out of the tree so that he lands on the ground face-first. I bring my boot down hard on the back of his neck, grinding his mouth into the grass. For the briefest of moments I contemplate breaking Jen's neck, but quickly force the thought from my mind.
"Cut the shit, Jen! I'm in no mood! Who is he?"
Jen struggles to lift his head, and spits out a clod of dirt before he speaks. "His name is Estes! Jack Estes!"
"What else do you know about him?"
"That he's bad news!"
"And I'm not?"
Sometimes my loathing of renfields overwhelms me, and when it does, Jen bears the brunt of it. I always end up feeling bad about it, because it's not really his fault. Unlike the human Judas goats who seek out their dark masters, Jen genuinely can't help being what he is. A vampire bit his mother while she was in the early stages of pregnancy, thereby tainting him in the womb. Technically, he's a dhampire - sort of a supernatural half-breed, ostracized by both species. In many ways, we have a lot in common.
I remove my foot from his neck and motion for him to stand. "Get up. I don't want you getting off on this any more than you have already."
Jen scowls at the grass stains on his crushed velour pants with genuine dismay. "Look at these trousers! Do you have any idea what the dry cleaning bill is going to be?"
"I'm sure you can afford it, what with the cash you've been making peddling information to this Estes."
"What makes you think I've got dealings with him? I just said that I knew his name, that's all."
"Come off it, Jen! Remember who you're talking to here. We're family, right? We're just like this, aren't we?" I hold up my hand and cross my fore and middle fingers. "You've been acting as a stalking horse for this Estes bloke, am I right? I know you rent yourself out as a double agent to vampires from time to time, so why not another vampire hunter?"
"I'm not a stalking horse," he replied petulantly. "I provide consultant work, if you don't mind."
"You can call it synchronized cat-flinging for all I care. All that matters is that you've got a working relationship with this Estes. That means he's more likely to trust you."
Jen fixes me with a cautious eye. "Are you going to kill him?"
"No."
"Is that your final answer?"
With its penchant for corpse-pale make-up, heavy eyeliner, black clothing, and eccentrically morbid behavior, the Goth scene is perfect camouflage for vampires and an excellent recruiting ground for minions. And as much as he loathed minions, Estes had to admit they had their uses.
When the pallid little man with the elaborate dreadlocks had first sidled up to him and whispered, "I know what you need," Estes had assumed he was being solicited for either sex or drugs. When he'd attempted to brush his un wanted companion off, the slighter man had smiled slyly, his eyes gleaming like those of a fox in the brush, and pointed at a youngish man with a shaved head and a tinted monocle who was cruising the dance floor.
"That one is hundred and seventy-six years old. He claims to have been a viscount in the Austro- Hungarian court. He lies. I have it on good authority he was a Polish swineherd."
The minion's name was Jen and he claimed to have once served a powerful vampire lord, but had become embittered toward vampire society by his treatment after his patron's demise. Apparently vampires have little interest in taking into their service minions who were not "loyal" enough to follow their masters to the grave. From that evening on Estes had paid to use Jen's considerable knowledge to his own advantage.
Despite their mutually beneficial agreement, there was still something deeply repulsive about Jen, although Estes couldn't exactly put his finger on just what it was. The man was simply intrinsically wrong somehow, and he managed to stir an instinctual dislike within Estes. It was the same disquiet humans felt when in the presence of a spider or a snake.
Estes scanned the crowded bar and caught sight of his contact standing at the farthest end of the rail, his appearance as outlandish as usual.
"Jen," he said flatly, nodding his head in polite acknowledgement.
Jen looked up from his drink, his eyes flashing the same feral fire Estes had glimpsed at their first meeting. "What is you want from me, Jack?" he asked, his words slurred by alcohol.
"Information."
"What kind of information?" The minion smiled wryly, using an overlong fingernail to stir the ice cubes in his drink.
Estes glanced about, making sure they weren't being watched, and leaned in close. "Have you ever heard of the Blue Woman?"
Jen regarded him in silence for a long moment, and then chuckled humorlessly. "I take it you're not talking about Picasso."
"What has that to do with anything?" Estes snapped. "I'm in no mood for your being clever tonight.
Answer the question: yes or no?"
Jen sighed and nodded his head, causing the beads woven into his braids to click like dice in a cup. "Yes, I've heard of her."
"Do you know how I can get in touch?"
Jen eyed him for a long moment, as if deciding whether or not to answer. "Are you sure that's what you want? Beware of what you ask for, Jack. You might just get it."
Estes regarded the smaller man carefully. "Are you telling me you can arrange a meeting with her?"
"If that's what you really want, yes."
"You still haven't answered my question. Can you arrange a rendezvous?"
"Of course I can," Jen replied as he sipped his drink. "The Blue Woman and me, we're like this." He held up his left hand. He had somehow managed to wrap his pinkie over his ring finger. "We're family."
"Is that so?" Estes replied, still dubious.
"Would I lie to you?"
"Probably. How come you've never mentioned to me that you know her?"
"You never asked before now."
Estes shrugged. He couldn't argue with him there. "Is she a genuine vampire slayer?"
"As real as it gets, my friend. She hates vampires more than you do."
"I seriously doubt that," Estes sniffed. "What are you laughing at?"
"You'll find out," Jen said, trying hard to suppress another snicker.