Tires squealed against pavement as the red Honda sped around the corner of the parking garage. At the high speed, the car’s bottom scraped against the ground. The grading sound was such that a car salesman worth his salt would have cringed, knowing what was just done to the resale value. The only parking space available was at the far end, total opposite of the elevator.

The car came to a sudden, noisy stop and the smell of burnt rubber was rancid in the air. First, the driver looked in the review mirror; nobody, no headlights. With jackrabbit speed, he whipped the door open and jumped out of the car like he had just noticed a rattlesnake at his feet.

Lights lined the ceiling of the concrete and steel room, but the overwhelming amount of dirty gray in the parking area seemed to the drain the color out of everything. The cars were just dark, shiny blurs as he ran toward the silver doors of the elevator. The unexpected sound of an oncoming car stopped the man cold in his tracks. His eyes widened as his face tensed. He was expecting something that didn’t happen.

The vomit stain on the shirt of Malton’s tuxedo had spread almost to his waist. His hair was cut neatly off the neck and above the ears. He was a handsome guy even if he was scared. His bowtie was loose around his neck and he was wearing a very nice pair of leather shoes.

The car slowed, and Malton ran across to the next row of cars.

In between the final two rows of parking spaces he saw a white-haired man wearing a dark, long-sleeved t-shirt and wide-legged brown pants. The man was going in the same direction as Steven, but he was a few steps behind.

“Steven Malton?”, the man asked pleasantly. “Are you Steven Malton?”

At first he didn’t stop, but he heard the other man hurrying behind him. The elevator door was fifteen feet away and there was no sign of the nut case who had just shot up the wear house. He stopped.

“Who wants to know, pal?” His southern speech was a little shaky. He had not yet come down form his adrenaline high.

The white-haired man took a step forward. Steven was hit by the wave of booze that came from the man; smelled like a dumpster. He stopped directly in front of the other man. They were almost touching and, by the overhead lights, Steven could see an aged and wrinkled face.

“All you have do is give it back.” As he spoke, yellow, broken teeth pushed out a breath that smelled of ash. The guy looked like hell with the thinning rat’s nest on top of his head. Steven had seen the old drunks roaming the streets, but this was the first one he had actually seen near the apartment. He wasn’t paying four grand a month in hard-earned extortion money to deal with the street scum.

Malton sneered at the old man. “Look, buddy, why don’t you go back to the street and find a gutter to crawl in and die, ok.”

He replied with a smirking chuckle. “Just give me the dragon and I’ll leave.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about!” Steven’s face turned red with his anger and he turned to walk away. A strong hand on his shoulder halted his progress.

Like a little girl shaking off a spider her brother threw on her, Malton flailed his arm attempting to break the homeless man’s grip. “Get off me!”, he squealed as he jumped away.

Cackling loudly, the old man lunged forward wrapping his arms around Steven. “Give it to me, Steven!” He caught the man off guard and wrestled him to the ground.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about", Malton protested. “I don’t have any dragon.”

The old man sniffed Steven’s throat, struggling to hold him down. “Sure you do.” The old man’s tongue crackled with spittle as he lowly dragged it up his captive's face. Malton baulked when the wet, clammy slab of flesh pulled a moist trail up his cheek and the tip of the tongue probed at his eye. His face contorted and he thrashed, but there was no getting away, The man had him. “I’ve got fucking money! Is that what you want?!”

Horrified, Steven clamped his mouth shut. The old man was trying to push his tongue into Steven’s mouth. “I taste your lie, Malton. I know you have it.”

Revolted by the man on top of him, Steven panicked. Snapping his jaws shut, he took a bite out of the old man’s face. A hunk of wrinkled cheek came off in his mouth. The old man squawked in pain, instinctively bringing his hands to his face to grab the wound. Escape had finally presented itself, but Malton went a step further. Firmly placing both hands on the sides of the man’s head. He twisted savagely; bone crunched audibly.

He threw off the dead man and made for the elevator, not stopping to look back.

After the doors closed and the hum of the elevator vanished, the garage was quiet... still. As if waking up from a nap, the old man got up from the ground. Eyes, fixed in the direction of the doors, “I’ll be back, and I’m so glad you want to do this the fun way.”

The parking area echoed with maniacal laughter.


* * *


Malton pounded on the door with a fist. “Let me in now!”

He was standing alone in a hallway with marble flooring and green wallpaper. There were three other doors, making the situation of penthouses a square. Between each door was a white pedestal with a bronze bust.

“Open the fucking door!” He pounded again; Southern accent trembling with fear. This time he heard footsteps running toward him from the other side. The door swung open and he was staring Ted in the face; a tall man with a thick head of hair who was naked from the waist up; one hell of a meaty chest, like an out-of-shape pro wrestler. He was frantically trying to buckle his pants.

“What is it, boss?’ He stuck his head out the door looking up and down the hall.

Without a word, Malton stormed past the man, through the tremendous foyer, and past the naked blonde clutching a towel to herself. On his way to the bar in the center of the plush carpeted den, he snarled, “Get her out of here!”

The woman looked at Ted in silence. He nodded, and she hurried to the back of the house

“What’s the problem, boss?”

Steven gulped his scotch. “Where are Hamilton and JD?! I got a bunch a crazy bastards following me all over town!”

He could tell by the sound in his boss' voice Malton was worried... scared as hell was more like it. Ted walked over to a chair and pulled a revolver from under the cushion. “H-here in the building?” He looked back and in the direction of the closed door, then at Steven again. “They went downtown to pick up some broads.”

Bottle clinked against glass as the man at the bar poured another stiff drink; he wasn’t even listening to his henchman. “One of those two guys Marty and Butch brought down to the warehouse...”, he drained his glass. “One of those fuckers was some kind of martial arts freak or something.” Tension mounted in his voice as he told the story. “I’ve never seen anything like it! He was jumping around; a fucking backflip from the ground onto the roof of the God damn van, getting filled with bullet holes, but the bastard just kept getting up!”

“Holy shit!” Ted was amazed.

“That wasn’t the half of it, though,” Malton nearly shouted, taking the bottle and his glass over to a leather couch. “He fucking bit out Ozzy’s brains!”

“Wha?t!”

“That’s what I said, bit out Ozzy’s motherfucking brains!” Steven made a sweeping gesture with his hand. “Bit his brains right out the back of his head! Once he started shooting the place up, I got the hell out of there!”

Calming slightly, he took another sip. The burning heat of the liquid raced down his throat exploding into warmth in his stomach. “I want a twenty-four hour watch in this house! If anybody comes to the door, I want their ass dead.” This time he forewent the inconvenience of the glass and tilted the bottle back; brackish liquid glugging down the bottle’s neck. The flood of scotch calmed his nerves. “I want you to get some of the boys up here. Make sure you call Martinez. I want his ass here too.”

Ted nodded, waiting to see if his boss had anything else to say.

Malton’s chilly, gray eyes cut a harsh stare into his bodyguard. “Now!, God damn it! What the fuck do I pay you for?!”

Ted hurried down a long hall and a door closed behind him.

“Chris'sake!”, the Atlanta-born criminal mumbled from the couch sipping on the bottle, “Asshole.”

Steve let the bottle hang over the edge of the couch. There was no sound coming from down the hall. In anger, Malton shook his head. He hurled the bottle against the wall, glass flying everywhere.

“If I have to come back there and get you off that whore, I’ll fucking kill you God Damn it! I’m not playing, Ted!”

From under the couch he yanked out an Uzzi and pulled back the slide. His eyes were wide with the stress of a caged animal. “Call Martinez! You hear me?!”


* * *


The cab pulled up to the curb and Sabian climbed out into the arms of his mother night. There was no substitute for a pristine black sky above his head. Since his baptism into the fold of the damned by the woman at Lindesfarn so many years ago, he had lost his desire for the world of the indoors. As a vampire, his body was dead, and his kind felt most comfortable connected to the earth that would one day claim them. Man and his incessant use of electricity to hold off the night mother’s loving cloak was merely one symptom of the fear that shackled most of the pitiful creatures.

He tipped the driver generously. “Forget you ever saw me.”

The unshaven cab driver tugged at his worn baseball cap as he nodded. He couldn’t quite put a location to the man’s strange accent. Sabian turned and walked toward the open doors, casting out the boom and techno sounds of dance music from the “Catwalk” dance club.

Refreshed from the blood of the runaway girl down at the Alaskan Way Viaduct, he walked with renewed vigor. The new clean white shirt, ironed crisply, was tucked into his slacks and the long, black overcoat swung from his tall frame. He wore a pair of polished black leather shoes. His shoulder-length hair was combed neatly. A single lock of hair slashed down his face like a scar from a blade of shadow. Under his coat, both loaded Rugers were in their holsters. With his greatest enemy still four hours from rising, Sabian needed to collect a favor.

At the door, the bouncer gave him a doubtful look. The bald man, squeezed into the fabric of a black t-shirt and jeans dragged his gaze from the man’s face to the fake ID that read “Marco Griffin”. Sabian had had to start purchasing fake identities about twenty years ago. The days of giving false names had come to an end when computers began governing the affairs of man. Now he had to provide false lives.

“Hadn’t seen you here before, Marco?”

Sabian smiled. These bouncers amused him. Their games of toughness were always practice for real threats. He waited patiently for the man to return his ID. Giving “Marco” an “I’m going to be watching you look”, he handed over the card.

As Sabian walked into the dark room pulsing with pounding primal rhythms, flashing electronic lights made dancers look like soaring specters. The sight of scantily clad young women with long hair grinding their hips pleased the vampire. The taste of their hot young blood was the sweetest nectar. And the strutting young bucks with their piercings and their brands and delusions, thinking the world owed them respect, aroused his love of carnage. Youth was truly his favorite time of life.

Before he reached the bar, glowing with red neon trim, a young dancer displayed herself before him. Pale legs in fishnet stockings, calves arched seductively from heeled shoes, slinked toward him. Her voluptuous thighs and buttocks were caressed by a skirt that left little to the imagination and her heaving breasts were pushed together by a corset top. Painted red lips and raven hair were stunning, but paled in comparison to the shimmering blue pools of her eyes. Her attention was focused on Sabain as if he were a knife inside her. Gliding towards him, she wrapped her arms around his neck, slowly waxing his body with her breasts and crotch. He was reminded of a gypsy wife he had owned in his mortal youth. Sarella had taken great pleasure in fulfilling his needs and he loved none of his wives as he had loved her.

“Hi stranger,” she breathed hotly into his ear over the pounding music, “care to take me home tonight? It’ll be worth it.” Her moist tongue flickered across his neck. A faint stirring awakened in him. This gorgeous banshee would indeed be a pleasure, but right now he had business to attend to. Slowly, his strong hands slid down her back onto her tone behind. The firmness sent a tingling through him. In response to his cue, she rolled her crotch into him once more. Sabian’s keen smell picked up the fragrance of her desire. He had to force himself to step back.

“Unfortunately, tonight is not the night the gods will hear the music of our lovemaking.” Taking her hand, he kissed her fingertips gently and her scent intensified. “Tonight I’m looking to speak with Randy Halifax.” Lowering her hand, he let his eyes ask his question.

Her movement slowed, but Sabian still held her undivided attention. “His office is upstairs.”

“I eagerly await our reunion.” And he did. As soon as Malton was rotting in the moonlight, he would return for a night of passion with this heavenly maiden.

On the far side of the dance floor, beyond a cluster of tables, he saw the iron staircase spiraling up to the next floor. Wading across the sea of flesh, he made out a shadowy form standing near the stairs. Sabian was sure the broad man had a weapon under his jacket, and with this many people around he wasn’t about to risk trouble.

The guy had a short haircut and was wearing a headset. A lit cigarette dangled at his side in his left hand. When he saw the tall man in the black coat approach, he put his right hand in the pocket of his Seahawks jacket.

“Sorry, buddy, this is a restricted area, staff only.”

Sabian didn’t get too close. He didn’t want to spook the guy. “I’m here to speak to Halifax.”

“Got an appointment?” The red ember at the end of the cigarette brightened as he took a drag. His eyes darted around. Sabian knew he was looking for the backup that wasn’t there.

“Tell him the man that took care of his daughter’s problem is here.” Sabian’s dark eyes betrayed nothing. His knife-edge confidence was unsettling to the weak, and the man with the headset shuffled, taking a step away.

“No appointment, no meeting, got it fuckwad.” The raised voice, profanity; feeble attempts at trying to take back control of the situation.

Sabian pointed at a table. “Deliver the message. I’ll be over there.” Without waiting for a response, he walked over and took a seat. He could see the man’s lips moving. Now he would have a few minutes wait. It was the oldest trick in the book; time invites self-doubt. Instead, Sabian upped the ante by ordering a bottle of grain alcohol. When the waitress returned with it, he didn’t even use a glass, just tilted up the bottle. Alcohol no longer affected him. In death he was only able to taste it.

Grim delight came to him when he saw the guard’s eyes light up. Again, Sabian was in control of the situation and when he put down the empty bottle, there was no doubt.

A few minutes later, three men came down the stairs. They were dressed much the same as the bouncer in their small t-shirts, to show off their hours at the gym, and ripped jeans. The guard pointed at Sabian’s table and they walked over, surrounding him just as he expected they would. He saw a smile pass between them. They had taken the bait; empty bottle meant he was drunk as shit. One of them was wearing an unbuttoned flannel shirt and as he flipped it open, deliberately showing his pistol, he gave Sabian a cross look.

“So, you want to talk to Mr. Halifax?” Sabian nodded in silence. He loved how these two-bit hoods tried to put on the facade of organized crime.

“Relax,” Sabian said in his antiquated accent, “I’ve simply come to ask for your boss' help; owes me a favor.”

They led him up the stairs. The man with the headset stepped aside but cast a dark look in Sabian’s direction. Sabian’s smirk just pissed him off, but they both knew he didn’t have the balls to try anything.

At the top of the stairs, the group of men walked down a hallway lit with lights made to look like ancient wall sconces. Doorways, covered by thin sheets, lined both sides of the hall. As they waked down the hall, Sabian saw silhouettes; couples in some, groups in others, tangled in carnal acts. Moans of pleasure and grunts of expenditure filled the air.

Stopping in front of a closed door, the man in the flannel knocked.

“Come in,” a voice came from the other side.

Before he opened the door, the man pulled the gun out of his pants and pointed it at Sabian. “Anything funny and you’re one dead mother fucker.”

Sabian didn’t even acknowledge the comment. In these close quarters he could kill them all in the blink of an eye, but he hoped it wouldn’t come to that.

The door opened into a lavish area filled with plush couches, a well-stocked bar on the back wall and large, ornately carved hard wood table with seats for ten. Mingling with the laughter of the two naked women on one of the couches directly in Sabian’s line of sight, was soft music coming from the wall-mounted speakers; the ethereal sounds of Enya. Between them was a man in his sixties; gray hair, bushy beard, and knobby knees poking out of his boxer shorts. On the table in front of them were several lines of coke.

Seeing the tall figure clad in his long coat, the wings of the fallen angel, and his grim expression, startled the women. Cowering back into the cushions, the drug whores fell silent. Halifax’s eyes showed that he remembered the day Sabian Wolfe brought his daughter's attackers to justice. There was no doubt that he recalled giving his word to Sabian that he would fulfill a request for a favor in the future.

“I see you remember me, Randy.”

“What do you want, Wolfe,” he snarled, showing his crooked teeth. The man got up from the couch. His fat, round gut, covered with white hairs, dropped over the waist of his shorts.

“I want you to keep your word. That’s it; nothing else.” He waved an arm congenially. “Why don’t you ask the ladies to step outside for a minute so we can talk?” It wasn’t that Sabian minded killing anyone that was in the way or that posed a threat to keeping his true nature hidden; it was just that he wasn’t one for waste. Death was the end of the road and if it wasn’t necessary, he tried to avoid it. Besides death brought attention to lives that otherwise were overlooked. He didn’t want the authorities poking around any more than they needed to. That made concealing himself even more difficult.

“Get out of here,” the old man snapped. The girls hurried across, past the visitors, and out the open door. “Ok, Wolfe, what do you want?”

“Where can I find Steven Malton?”

The old man had to think about it before he said a word. If it got around that he was snitching, he was good as dead and he knew for damn sure that his bouncers were slugs on the belly of the crime world. There was no way he could trust them to keep this a secret.

“This doesn’t concern you, Randy. I need to kill Malton for personal reasons. Tell me where I can find him and I’ll leave. Your debt to me will be paid.”

“Come on, Wolfe, you know I can’t do that. I can’t have people not trusting me. How would that go for a businessman, huh?”

“I see.” Sabian didn’t finish his words when he saw the gunman scratch the bridge of his nose. Instead, he grabbed the neck of the bouncer next to him. With one snap, the neck broke and the man crumpled to the ground.

The man in the flannel tried to get his gun in position, but the edge of Sabian’s polished leather shoe kicked him in the face and he flew against the wall. With the coldness of a cemetery wind, the vampire pulled one of his Rugers from the folds of his coat. Three shots, hushed by the silencer, exploded clods of flesh from the man’s chest. He slid down the wall leaving a bloody trail.

Sabian turned to the last man standing, blocking his jab with his forearm, then grabbed him by the face; thumbs in his eyes. The force of his squeeze brought forth sounds of extreme pain from the man as he clawed at Sabian’s hands. Blood streamed from his eyes before the cranial vault was crushed, killing the man instantly. Tearing the man’s t-shirt from his chest, the vampire used it to wipe his hands. Then he tossed the rag to the floor. “No one will know now. Where is Malton?”

Halifax was visibly shaking. Astonished by what he had just witnessed, he fell back onto the couch. “He’s got a penthouse in Belltown at the Royal Oaks.”







[ index ] [ guestbook ] [ e-mail Renga ] [ e-mail earon ]