Midnight Brings the Best Revenge

Chapter 1: Boredom

Midnight. A shiver of excitement crept down my spine. There was never a better time to do everything that one ever wanted to do than in the dead of the night.

I smiled up at the moon. It's eerie yellow light showed bright over the dark streets and alleys. I moved my tongue over my lips and breathed in a breath of the autumn air. It was wonderful.

I turned into a dead end alley and stopped. I leaned against the wall and stood stock-still. I could sense the man turning the corner down the street. I was waiting for him. I gave a small chuckle. Could he be expecting me? Was he worried about the murders? Would he think that he'd be next?

A foot hit the pavement next to me and my prey's back emerged from the turn. I lunged and caught him before he knew what had hit him.

"Say goodbye," I whispered as he struggled under my hold. His eyes flashed around to face me and he tried to scream, but my hand was already over his mouth. I sprang up into the air to land atop the tall building whose wall I had been leaning against.

And so the killing continues.
Artemis looked around the room. It was large, covered in dust and cluttered with books and scrolls of all sorts. It looked just like any other ancient library that could possibly hold information to unlocking the secrets to the strange puzzle that he was trying to solve.

"Hmmm..." he thought aloud, "if I were a book containing information about these murders, where would I hide?"

It wasn't any ordinary puzzle, and he wasn't looking for ordinary answers. He was looking for history.

He began shuffling through papers, flipping through books and basically tearing the room apart. As he did, he reflected on current events. The murders had started about a month ago in London. It seemed like a not-so violent Jack the Ripper. Two bodies were found dumped in a small river on the morning of September 2.

The bodies had seemed untouched at first glance. But, after careful observation at a morgue, the morticians found two small marks on the inside of their right thighs. At first they thought that they might have been injected with some sort of drug, but an autopsy proved otherwise. It was, in fact, loss of blood that had caused their deaths.

It seemed like everything afterwards had come out of a horror film. Newspapers started rumors about vampires and superstitious nonsense that no one believed, but read anyway for a change of the usual celebrity gossip.

Artemis snickered as he opened a leather-bound book that he had just pulled off a shelf. The whole idea was preposterous. Vampires? In London? Whatever happened to werewolves?

But then, what was a vampire to him? After all he had been through, they could be real. Captain Holly Short had most certainly proved him wrong about silly childhood fairy tales. One year previous, a kidnapping of a fairy had gotten him a lot of gold. If fairies existed, why not vampires?

Returning to his previous thoughts, he shut a book and began to unroll a scroll. No one really believed the stories; who would? It wasn't until three days after the river had revealed its unexpected treasure that five more bodies were found. And all of them had had marks on their thighs identical to those on the first two victims.

The press had a field day. The front pages were filled with pictures of Bela Lugosi and articles about bats, strange mists and Bram Stoker. The worst part about it was that people gobbled it up. They loved the idea of murder and strange goings-ons in their lifetime. Why they enjoyed it, Artemis never knew, but, then again, he didn't exactly get the best kicks either (i.e. crime).

To tick off the rest of the statistics, by September 16, more than fourteen bodies had been uncovered. They all bore two, small red dots on their inner thighs.

Artemis sighed and sat down, rubbing his forehead. He had found nothing. The only reason that he had been here in the first place was because he was bored. He had no reason to start a crime or anything of that sort presently because it would be ignored due to all of the murders. So, what better to do than to try to figure out what was really going on?

Did he really believe that the murders were due to vampires? He wasn't sure. But, as he had no other leads, that was what he was searching. He supposed the only intriguing detail about the deaths was that they had all taken place between 11:57 PM and 1:29 AM. Even more reason for the press to suspect vampires. Oh well.
Butler looked up from polishing his daggers as a very tired looking Artemis entered the room. "Any luck?" he asked.

Artemis shook his head. "None. You must understand, Butler, that I am not interested in figuring this out at all. But it is just something to do; business is slow."

Butler gave a small half smile and returned to shining his weapons. Artemis collapsed into a leather chair on the opposite side of the room.

Bored. Nothing to do. Bored.

He closed his eyes and sighed. Even though he said he didn't care about the murders, he did. You see, there was another connection between the victims that no one else had yet figured out. They all had had some sort of direct or indirect contact with a man named Theodore McKenzie within seventy-two hours of their death.

Theodore McKenzie was a gambling man. He had lost a lot of money in Las Vegas and started brawls in a bars constantly. He traveled a lot and had gotten into a rather sticky spot with the police a few years back. All Artemis knew was that it had something to do with messing around with records at the University of Paranormal Observation and Research in Salem, Massachusetts. Of course, that only made the murders more suspicious.

McKenzie was not only a gambling man, but also a man of his own beliefs. According to Artemis's sources, he had founded the UFO Observatory in Russia, the Research Center of Ghosts and Such in China and several other large organizations in paranormal research. He himself had paid $2 million to fund a college's trip to Transylvania. McKenzie claimed that it was all done in the name of those who have yet to be discovered.

BANG!

Artemis's eyes snapped open and Butler shot to his feet. The sound was something that he had never heard so clearly before, but he immediately knew what it was:

There was someone on the roof.