#1
By Brian Campo ( bcampo@hotmail.com )
Disclaimer: This is a work of fan fiction. Sansker and all Spawn related characters are owned by Todd McFarlane productions and I do not contest that ownership. This story is in no way official, and should be taken as seriously as kids playing Spawn in their backyards. Please, do not sue me, I am hardly worth it :)
Warning: This story contains harsh language and EXTREMELY graphic violence. If you are easily offended, or think your mom might drop a load of hurt on you for reading this, don't. Consider yourself warned.
The wind came roaring down out of the Romanian highlands, shoving before it one of the nastiest snowstorms that the country had seen in years. Snow was piling up in drifts that covered the highways running through the valleys, and snow plows were running in twenty four hour shifts to keep things moving. All the roads leading up to the various residences on the mountain had been closed a week back, and at this point, even helicopters could not fly in.
In what seemed to be utter insanity, a lone dark figure hiked their way up through the passes. The person was wrapped in multiple layers of snow suits and carrying a pack of equipment on their back. This was not hiking weather, and had this person not been who they were, they would have long since curled up and died, perhaps to be found in the spring thaw. However, they were who they were, and they trudged on, oblivious of the bitter cold and the stinging wind.
The hiker reached a high peak and stopped to get their bearings. A pair of binoculars were pulled from the backpack and were used to scan the surrounding country side. Half way up the next mountain, lights could be seen shining in the darkness. The figure returned the binoculars to the pack and sniffed at the wind. There was the almost indescernable scent of smoke. Someone was home at that castle, and they had the fire place ablaze.
With a little jump, the hiker hefted the heavy pack farther up on their shoulders and started down the mountain at the same steady pace.
The dogs that had been cringing in fear next to Alden Raspin since the blizzard had started nearly a week ago suddenly stirred and jumped to their feet. They crept to the window and looked out into the driving snow, turning their heads this way and that, as if they were hearing something.
Alden sat the book he was reading on the table next to him and went over by his dogs. He patted them on the head, and tried to see what they were looking for. It was no use. It was all blackness and dizzying streaks of white out there.
"What do you hear, Fezza?" The big Dane looked at him for a second and gave him the cross between a grunt and a whine. "It's ok," he said. "Probably just the wind you heard."
It didn't occur to him that these dogs had been listening to the wind for a week and they hadn't reacted like this before.
"Are you hungry?" asked Alden. "Come, I will have Pietr pull out some steaks for you."
He left the reading room with the four dogs tailing him closely. His path took him out of his reading room and passed various bedrooms and offices. The halls he walked down were decorated with very old paintings and tapestries. There were suits of armor standing at each corner. At the end of the hall there was a landing and a long winding staircase that brought him to the ground floor of the castle. He continued on his way to the kitchen, the dogs close behind.
Through one of the doorways he passed he saw men lounging around a large bunk room, playing cards, reading books, and watching television that was coming through by satellite. Every time the wind would blow, the signal would go fuzzy and one of the men sitting next to the television would kick it. Each man had a machine gun sitting within arms reach.
He shook his head as he walked away from them. Kasner, or whatever it was he called himself these days, had insisted on him allowing the guards to stay here in the next coming weeks. Kasner said that he didn't want to have to worry about Raspin while he was he was making big move.
Still, twenty five men had seemed excessive. It was either that or five vampires, Kasner had said. Kasner knew how he felt about having other vampires around.
They had covered their tracks well, and there was little or no chance of anyone connecting him and Kasner, but it was better to be safe than sorry. Alden would have felt a lot better if it was really his well-being that Kasner was interested in, not covering his own ass.
And then there was the matter of the crates sitting in the dungeons below the castle.
Pietr greeted him when he entered the kitchen and Alden returned in kind.
"Would you be so kind as to pull some steaks for the dogs? They're fidgety."
The chef nodded and opened one of the massive walk in refrigerators to get the meat.
There was a loud banging sound from the ceiling and Alden jumped. The dogs forgot the promised meat and looked up, growling. Alden stared at the ceiling for a couple of seconds more, but there was just silence.
He turned and walked back down the hall to the bunk room. The men looked up when he entered the room. A few sat their cards down on the table.
"I believe that the wind has knocked a window open upstairs, would one of you be so kind as to go shut it?" Everyone looked at each other and finally one soldier named Frank Lane started to get up.
"Just a second, Frank." said one of the card players. "I'll come with you. This game has gone to shit anyway."
He started toward the door but Frank stopped him. "Your gun, Chucky."
"Shit, like I'll need it." He grabbed the rifle and followed Frank out in to the hall.
The old man was right, thought Frank. There was definitely a breeze running through the house. They ascended the stair case and walked out onto the landing above. Frank looked up and down the hall, trying to decide where the breeze was coming from. One of the guest bedrooms in the east wing, he decided.
Chuck leaned over the edge of the banister and whistled at the distance to the floor below. "I wonder why this Raspin guy needs a bunch of grunts like us around if he's some kind of vampire. Can't they do all kinds of crazy shit like shape shift into monsters and walk through walls?"
"That shit is just a bunch of myths." said Frank. "Haven't you read Kasner's book? He says that Vampires are pretty much the same as humans. All that other bullshit was made up by humans to legitimize the whole sale slaughter of his people."
He started down the hall toward the east wing and Chuckie tagged along behind.
"All I know," he said. "is that every vampire movie I ever saw, the dude could turn into a bat and shit."
"Well, this ain't a movie. This is real life. If it was a movie, we sure as hell wouldn't be coming up here alone because there would sure as shit be some monster up here waiting to take our heads off."
Chuckie thought about that and agreed. "This Kasner guy. You sound like you like him or something."
"I respect him, that's for sure. It isn't the man's fault that he was born a creature of the night. As far as I can see, he's been doing nothing but good. He's just trying to take care of his own kind. You gotta respect him for that." "Yeah, well, he gives me the willies."
Up ahead, the wind gusted and a door slammed. Frank walked to the door and opened it. A window was open alright. A tree from up the hill behind the castle had cracked under the weight of the wind and snow. It had fallen through the window, knocking snow and broken glass all over the floor inside.
"What a mess." he said, wandering into the room to get a better look at the damage. That was when he saw something under neath the branches of the tree. He pushed them back and saw two snow suits and an empty hiking pack.
"What the hell?" he said, spinning around and bringing up his gun. "Chuckie, look out!"
Chuckie, who was leaning against the door way, looked up to see what Frank had seen. Someone was standing on the thin ledge atop the door frame, holding themselves against the wall by holding on to a knife that they had driven in to it.
Frank could not get a good look at the intruder in the dim room. He saw the person's arm come up and then the first of four shots rang out.
By the time shot number two went off, he was already jumping for the downed tree. He felt one of the bullets smack into his thigh and he stumbled the last few steps to cover. Chuckie had jumped out into the hallway with a string of curses.
The figure above the door dove forward, did a twist in the air and landed in the light of the open doorway, facing out into the hall. The gun, a pistol, went off again and Chuckie was thrown against the wall. He slid down, leaving a long bloody streak.
Frank raised himself from behind the tree with rifle ready, just in time to see the figure disappear through the doorway. In the distance, he could hear the shouts of the men downstairs responding to the sound of gunfire. He limped through the doorway, cringing with each step. He stepped out as quickly as he could, sweeping his rifle left and right. The figure had just hit the stair case. Frank squeezed off a couple of rounds, but he knew he would miss. The intruder was extremely fast.
Shots erupted from the staircase as the first of the soldiers met with the intruder. There were shouts of pain and curses of surprise as they were shot down in a rapid burst of gunfire. Frank reached the banister in time to see the intruder go over the railing a little ways down, dropping the twenty five feet to the granite floor below. Dead and dying littered the stairway.
Holding onto the railing, Frank eased himself from step to step as quickly as he possibly could. Four steps from the top he saw a spent clip for an automatic pistol. He was negotiating the stairs well except when he got near the bottom he tripped and fell the last few steps to the floor. Fighting dizziness and nausea, he pushed himself to his feet, using his gun as a crutch. Multiple guns went off at the same time, machine guns, and that pistol the intruder was carrying that Frank had decided might be a Walther. Only now it sounded like they were firing off two Walthers.
The sounds of battle were coming out of the bunk room, he realized. He remembered that half the men in that room had been snoozing in their beds when he had left the room. They would have been caught by surprise, with little or no chance against their attacker.
He reached the door to the bunk room and grabbed the jam. He let his weight hang off one hand as he swung through the doorway looking for a target. The intruder had shot out the lights, and he knew they had been wearing black. He couldn't see a damn thing in there.
He lowered himself into a one legged crouch still hanging from the doorjam. He scanned the room for movement, slowly sweeping the gun's barrel back and forth. From somewhere across the room, he heard someone whisper, "Did someone get that bitch?" A gun fired and he heard the same voice grunt in pain.
Frank rolled back out the door, moving right, against the wall. The intruder was a woman?
Suddenly he realized that his wounded leg was still sticking out in front of the open door, marking his location. He grabbed the pant leg and jerked on the leg that now felt like so much dead meat. Too late, a booted foot snaked out and stepped on the leg, pinning it to the floor. He cried out in agony as the woman in black stepped through the door way and put three rounds in him. Two in the head, one in the heart.
In the kitchen, Alden, Pietr, and the dogs were all packed into the walk-in freezer. They had heard the last few gunshots a couple of minutes ago and had crowded themselves into the closest hiding place. Now, they crouched behind some racks of beef with bated breath, hoping that the killer would not realize they were there.
There was the sound of one of the refrigerators being opened and one of the dobermans started to growl. Alden grabbed him by the snout just in time to stifle a full fledged bark. One of the other dog's hackles rose as footsteps started their way and its chest rumbled. Alden grabbed at its snout too. A dog behind him gave a high nervous whine and Pietr tried to grab his snout. It turned on him, snarling.
A face appeared in the small window on the freezer door and Alden's jaw dropped to the bottom floor.
"Red?" he asked incredulously.
She smiled warmly and they hear the rasp of the pin being slid into the lock.
It was six hours later by Alden's watch when he started to look at his companions. Pietr was looking at the cold meat hanging from the ceiling. He was trying to figure out how he was going to thaw it enough for him to eat. Alden watched him, his eyes drifting down to the gentle pulsing he could see clearly on the man's throat. He was getting very hungry.
He looked at the dogs that were huddled in one corner. They were looking at him and Pietr with the same look.
Nancy Holden turned toward the camera with the red light glowing and put on a happy face. She took a deep breath and started the show.
"Hello, I am Nancy Holden. Today's date is June 6th, 2200 and you are watching Global Review. Tonight we have a very special guest. As the president and owner of multibillion dollar Kasner industries and leader of what many have called the Vampire Nation, Jan (pronounced yon) Kasner is without a doubt one of the most powerful people in the world. He is hailed as a savior by the millions of people who have benefited from Kasner Inc medical research, but he is proclaimed to be an abomination in the eyes of god by millions of people through out the world. Most recently, he penned an autobiographical book titled, "Coming into the light: The Jan Kasner story". Ladies and gentleman, in his first ever interview, I am proud to introduce, Mr. Jan Kasner."
Nancy turned toward the curtains and told herself once again that this was just another interview. She didn't have to like him, she just had to get his story. The curtains parted and out walked what appeared to be the perfect human. Jan Kasner was nearly six and a half feet tall, with dark copper skin and close cropped hair. He wore a loose fitting charcoal suit that bulged enticingly in all the right places. He turned to the crowd and gave them one of his broad p.r. grins and gave them a little wave. She noted that he seemed to get bigger the closer he got. His physical presence was over whelming.
Jan reached out and took the hand she offered him in a solid embrace. She hoped that he would not notice her involuntary recoil at his touch. He leaned down and whispered in to her ear.
"Thank you for doing this, Miss Holden."
"My pleasure." she lied and indicated a chair for him to sit in.
A man stood up in the crowd and screamed, "You fuckin' blood sucker!!!" Guards raced to grab him and he yelled obscenities as he was dragged from the studio. A censor was clicking away on his keyboard, removing the words in the three-second delay broadcast.
Jan watched as the man was dragged from the room, a sad look on his face. When the protestor was gone, he sat in the offered chair and crossed one leg over the other. Nancy made her way back to her own chair and took a second to situate herself.
"I'm so glad you could join us tonight, Mr. Kasner. The world has so may questions about you."
"Well, thank you, Nancy. Hopefully, I can answer some of those questions tonight, and maybe put a few rumors to rest and better yet, put a few hearts at ease."
He had a very strange accent, european, but not any definite country. It was very soothing, and his words just seemed to flow flawlessly from his mouth. It reminded her faintly of an actor from the late twentieth century. She couldn't remember the name but she knew he had played James Bond.
"So you are willing to answer some touchy questions tonight?"
"Ma'am, my life is an open book, and I have nothing to hide." He reached over and patted the hand she had sitting on her desk soothingly. She successfully resisted the urge to flinch. "Well," she said, withdrawing her hand discreetly into her lap. "perhaps we could start by discussing your recent takeover of Hong Kong."
"Yes. Despite what many have heard, Kasner industries purchased Hong Kong in a legitimate business deal. Why I did it is simple. I am sick of my people living in fear of the human race, and I am giving them a place where they can live in peace, without fear of persecution, or worse yet, genocide."
"By your people, you mean vampires, right?"
"We prefer the term supernaturally anemic person, or S.A.P.s, actually. But yes, they are my people, and I have dedicated my life to defending them. We don't choose to be what we are."
"But you do understand why there is reason for the human population to fear "your people". You live on blood. Most often human. "Your people" have been killing humans for thousands of years."
"First of all, we don't live on human blood. Kasner has made deals with American cattle industries to supply us with the excess blood from their slaughter houses. Rumors that we are feeding on the blood of humans are entirely false.
As for what my people may have done in the past, I'm sure they did what they had to do at the time to survive. Percentage wise, I'm sure that the amount of humans that have died at the hands of S.A.P.s is vastly outnumbered by the number of S.A.P.s killed by humans. At the end of the twentieth century, we were pushed nearly to the brink of extinction. We have always done the same thing that your kind have. We did what we had to do to survive. Sometimes, those things weren't pleasant. That's what we are trying to change. We are doing our best to conform to your rules. We are ready to take our place in the world."
"Have you ever drank human blood, Mr. Kasner?"
"No, ma'am, and neither do any of the people living in Hong Kong. It is against our law, which is enforced. In fact, I would venture to say that more humans pretending to be S.A.P.s have drank human blood then our kind ever have."
"Would you mind answering some personal questions?"
He sat forward in his chair and said, "Of course not."
"How old are you, exactly?"
"I will be one hundred and eight years old in November. Still a youngin' by our standards." There was that grin again and Nancy caught a flash of extended canines. She noticed that he was very careful when he smiled, very conscientious of his teeth and very careful not to smile too big.
"Do you have a wife, any children?"
Suddenly, he looked very sad. "I was married once, but I'm afraid that my wife took her own life. This was eighty three years ago. Very few of our kind are able to have children and usually those who can, can only have them when one of the parents are human. As both my wife and I were S.A.P.s, there was no way we could ever have any. I'm afraid that it was just too heart breaking for her. She committed suicide by sunlight."
His voice started to crack a little, and he had to stop to regain his composure. When he had pulled himself together, he said, "I'm sorry about that. It still hurts after all these years."
Nancy handed him a tissue and he dabbed at his eyes with it. She couldn't help but notice the little streaks of red on the tissue when he pulled it away from his eyes.
"Thank you, Miss Holden. If nothing else came of my wife's death, Kasner inc has been working on many medical research projects that benefit S.A.P.s and humans alike. We were the ones that finally found the cure to that hideous disease, A.I.D.S.. We've developed sunblocks that prevent skin cancer due to sunlight one hundred percent. In the next few months, we may be able to unveil a treatment that will give hope to childless couples."
The director was waving for Nancy to wrap it up, so she posed her last question to him.
"Is there anything you would like to let the world know while you have this chance?"
He thought for a moment and said, "I would just like to let the world know that they have nothing to fear from us. We only want what you want, peace and security. And finally, I would like to let those like me know that I have made a place for you, where you don't have to live in fear. Hong Kong has been declared sanctuary for you."
"Thank you, Mr. Kasner. I hope that you will come back sometime."
The crowd began to applaud and Jan stood up to bow for them. He gave Nancy the slightest peck of a kiss on her cheek and walked off stage and through the curtains.
The roar of the applause still ringing in his sensitive ears, the man now known as Jan Kasner exited the stage. His chest swelled with pride to the point where he was afraid it might burst. His dreams of leading the vampire nation were finally seeing light. Hong Kong was his and soon, vampires from all around the world would be flocking to his haven. He had accomplished what many before him had failed at, and not through slaughter and war, but through little white lies and subtle manipulation. Ok, maybe a little slaughter.
Waiting for him on the other side of the curtain were five of his most trusted body guards, vampires all. Or S.A.P.s, he thought with a grin. Man, did he have a gift for bullshit. The saps where the people that believed twenty percent of what he had said out there.
"Great show, Mr. Kasner. You knocked 'em dead." said Andrew, a young looking man that Jan had given the sacred bite twenty years before.
"Andrew," he whispered in reply. "we don't operate like that anymore." He gave Andrew a playful slug in the shoulder that made him take a couple of stumbling steps backward.
"I gotta tell you, boys. I feel good. I feel like doing a little hunting. What time is it in the Serengeti?"
Carl, a vampire who looked to be about forty but was closer to three hundred, looked at his watch. "It's about seven there. If we leave now, we'll get there a little after sunset."
"Very good. Mark, Andrew. You two take the lead on the way out. Remember, don't kill anyone unless you absolutely have to."
The five vampires surrounded him and they started toward the elevator that would take them to the roof. The elevator doors opened before they could get to them and out stepped a group of men in suits. There were nine of them all together.
Andrew was reaching into his jacket casually when four of the men in the other group did the same and whipped out pistols. The man in front, who was a good fifty pounds over weight and had white, thinning hair, flashed a badge at them.
"United Nations, war crime department, Mr. Kasner. We need to have a few words with you."
Kasner put a hand on Andrew's shoulder, stopping him from pulling his gun. "What about?"
"Perhaps you should call a lawyer, Mr. Kasner."
An hour later they were all gathered around a meeting table in the law offices of Feldin, Moore, and O'Neill. Kasner's attorney, Jacob Moore, was looking over some paperwork that the UN officials had brought with them.
The top ranking official, who had introduced himself as George McBean, slid some photographs across the table to Kasner.
"Do you know a Mr. Alden Raspin?" he asked.
Kasner looked at the pictures, not letting his face betray a thing. "I've met way too many people in my career to keep track of them. Should I know him?"
"Mr. Raspin was killed two weeks ago at his home in Romania. His body, along with those of twenty six other men, was found yesterday by highway maintenance workers who were clearing roads to the house. The killers were apparently there to obtain files out of Raspin's computers and file cabinets. There also seemed to be something missing from his collection of ancient weapons. A lot of the files that the killers went through, which were left sitting open on a desk, pertained to you."
Jacob Moore snorted in contempt. "Mr. Kasner is a well known man who owns hundreds of companies. I'm sure many people are maintaining files on him. What has this got to do with war crimes? Mr. Kasner has never been involved in a war."
"It's interesting that you should say that. Along with all these files, we also secured these photographs, which we found to be of interest."
He slid the file across the table to Kasner and his lawyer. Jan opened it up and felt his stomach drop in to his feet. They were black and white photos of Kasner and Raspin, standing in a Nazi death camp. He had one arm around Raspin's shoulders and a broad grin. Both wore SS uniforms.
"Is this some kind of sick joke?" said Mr. Moore. "My client was not even alive when these pictures were taken. He wasn't even born for another hundred and forty years. These are obviously fakes, or else that was just someone that looked like him."
"Yes, it's true that there were plenty of blond haired, blue eyed men in germany in those days. The man in the picture is named John Sansker. An amazing resemblance in both name and appearance to Mr. Jan Kasner, don't you think?"
"We have records for Mr. Kasner. Birth records that say he wasn't even alive when that picture was taken."
"Yes." said McBean. "We would like to see those records."
Kasner just kept staring at the picture like he couldn't believe what he was seeing. How could Alden have been so stupid as to have stuff like this sitting around his house?
Jacob, seeing that he wasn't going to be any help, attempted to bring these talks to a close.
"Is there anything else?" he asked. "Otherwise, Mr. Kasner is a very busy man."
"Actually," said a younger man standing by the window. "there is something else."
He held out his hand from across the table, which went unshaken.
"I'm Mark Tyler, I'm a United Nations inspector for weapons of mass destruction. When our men were investigating the Nazi connection to Mr. Raspin, they happened upon a bunch of these in the dungeons below the castle." He held up a picture of some silver, metal canisters with valves sticking out the top. "They contain some kind of chemical, which we have tested in a closed environment on animals. Apparently, it is some kind of new nerve toxin that does not kill, but instead causes severe brain damage to anyone who breathes it. It would leave them in a drooling catatonic state, like an alztheimer's patient."
"Or like cattle." said McBean.
"Just imagine the damage that could be done with this stuff if it were to be unleashed on a densely populated area like New York." said Tyler.
"Or China." said McBean.
"What does this have to do with my client?" asked Moore.
"Nothing directly. Don Chemical, the company that mixed the stuff, is not owned by Mr. Kasner. However, Don was under contract to make this stuff by Herald Inc. which is owned by Kasner Industries. Don said that they were told that the mix was a pesticide."
"Do you have any enemies, Mr. Kasner. Anyone that might want to soil your reputation?"
Jan gave them a how-can-you-be-so-stupid? look.
In the hallway several minutes later, Jan was slumped against the wall.
"What the hell is going on?" he asked, still dazed that he had lost so much ground in one afternoon. This morning, he had been doing so well. Hell, this morning he had been Martin Luther King Jr., now he was Hitler.
"Jan, don't worry about it." said Moore. "These goons got dick on you. It's all circumstantial. Hell, you could even say that the chemicals were being still being tested as a pesticide. The worse they can do is fine you for improper storage. We can cook up a story about the pictures, say that it's your great great grandfather or something and you've dedicated your life to righting his wrongs. Point is, you're not going to jail or anything."
"They said they want to inspect all my companies."
"Let them try. We'll pull a Hussein on them and it will take years before they can even get into the lobbies."
"What was that about some antique they said was stolen? Somebody breaks in, kills twenty-six men, leaves incriminating files about me laying all over and then stops to take a trinket on the way out?"
Jacob flipped through his papers. "Um, it says here that it was something called, "The Spear of Destiny". At least that's what the plate on the broken display case said. Ever hear of it?"
Jan faintly remembered Alden telling him something about it, a little after world war two. It had been one of Hitler's little treasures that Raspin had stolen when the reich was falling. Alden had said that it was just a fortune telling devise, but Sansker had thought that he was lying at the time.
"I'm not sure what it was. Can you have someone look into it? How is all this going to look to the press?" asked Jan.
"I called your best people and they are working a spin story. Look, there's nothing you can do here. Why don't you get going and I'll take care of everything? The boys said you were going for a hunt. If you leave now, you still got plenty of time."
"Yeah," said Kasner. "A hunt might do me good. Let me work out some of this frustration."
"Good help the creature that gets in your way. Go. Get out."
Kasner and company walked out into the high noon sun and blinked their eyes in the brightness. Kasner's sunblock was working like a charm, he didn't feel the least bit of discomfort from the sun's rays.
A crowd of reporters that had been waiting for him outside turned to him all at once and rushed toward him.
The words, "There he is!" swept back and forth through the crowd and cameras started flashing left and right. Stay calm, he told himself, he had come too far to lose it all because he had lost control and gutted an annoying reporter.
He put on a smile and followed his men through the thick of it. The press of bodies around him was oppressive, and he fought his old urges. His sensitive nostrils were assaulted by a multitude of scents, sixteen different types of cologne, sweat, a variety of deodorants, and above everything else, he could tell that one of the female reporters was menstruating. He zeroed in on her, ten feet away, jumping up and down behind some other reporters, trying to yell a question to him above the crowd.
"What did the UN want with you, Kasner?" screamed someone.
"Will the vampire nation become a true country?"
He ignored them, and stayed close to his men, who surrounded him. Ahead of him, Andrew grabbed an overzealous camera man by the face and tossed him backward into his companions. Good, thought Jan, he's taking it easy on them.
Thankfully, he could see that they were getting close to their transport. It sat in the parking lot, looking like the cross between a space shuttle and a harrier jet, and was painted a dull black. Frederick, the sixth Vampire guard he had brought with him on the trip, was standing beneath the hull of the ship with a cattle prod in one hand and a sawed-off shotgun in the other. When he saw that Jan and the others were coming, he punched some keys on a keypad next to the ship's closed hatch. The door opened with a hiss and a small set of stairs descended for them to enter the ship.
When they reached the doorway, Andrew and Mark each stepped aside to give him room to pass. When he had gone by, they slipped in behind him, ascending the little set of stairs backward so that they could cover his back. They were followed into the ship by Carl, Scott, and Rex. Frederick was the last to board the transport, and they shut the door behind him.
"Thank you, gentlemen." said John Sansker, weary, but happy at last not to have to be playing that pussified Kasner character anymore. "You did an excellent job. I'm positively dying of thirst. Perhaps you would join me in a drink?"
He opened a small refrigerator and withdrew a wine bottle filled with a very dark, red liquid. He popped the cork off and inhaled the aroma.
"Cow's blood, indeed." he said with a chuckle. He scooped some wine glasses off their racks next to the fridge and began handing them out.
The transport's engines began to start up, they were a low whining sound that was quickly gaining in volume. There was a slight jerk as the craft lifted off from the parking lot and turned east.
Jan filled each of his men's glasses and then his own. He tipped the glass back far and drank deeply.
Feeling a little better, he said, "I wish Raspin was still alive, cause I'd kill him. What the hell was he thinking, leaving all that shit around his house? When you leave behind a name you burn all the old stuff, that's how it's done. You don't keep momentoes."
"Must have been a good crew that did the job." said Carl. "Took out twenty eight men."
"I could have left five vampires there and Alden would still be alive. He was always so paranoid that other vampires were out to get him that he wouldn't hear of it. And now he's dead."
"How you want to handle all this shit, boss?" asked Andrew.
"I'll worry about it later. Right now I want to put something breathing between my hands and make it stop." He always thought that the vampire eat vampire world he had lived in before was stressful. It had nothing on the nerve racking world of politics.
They rest of them drank deeply, emptying their glasses. Carl savored his for a moment and then said, "Hey, what is that? Korean?"
"No," said Sansker. "It's chinese."
In the night, the plains of the serengeti are alive with the sounds of predators and their victims. There is the occasional cackle of a hyena who has managed to steal a scrap from a rotting carcass, or there is the ball shriveling roar of the lion who has chased the hyena off.
In the plains, there are scattered water holes and here is where the majority of the killing is done in the night. The lions know that the plant eaters must come here to drink, and that they can be ambushed here. The hyenas know that if they are quick enough, they can steal quick bites of the carcasses that the lions are feeding on before the lion snaps it's back with one powerful swipe of it's paw.
It is a dangerous place to be, but Sansker felt at home. He was crouched among the reeds next to the water, poised on the balls of his feet and the tips of his fingers. His ears were twitching, picking up details of the hunt that even his night vision could not see. He was aware of the crackling of the mud that he had wiped all over himself earlier to cover his scent. It was drying and starting to fall off in little flakes every time he breathed. He was aware of the soft creaking of the leather jock strap that was his only apparel. He was aware that there was a zebra drinking on the other side of the hole, only fifteen feet away.
His nose told him that the zebra was a male, and it was old enough to have been breeding recently.
The muscles in his legs and forearms tightened as he prepared himself for the leap that would clear the water hole. There was a crunch of grass behind him and Sansker rolled to the side, just in time. The male lion that landed where he had been only a second before would have crushed his spine.
He was on his feet in a second, going into a defensive crouch as the lion recovered from its near miss. Across the water, the zebra took off at a gallop, scared by the sound of the lion's attack. Sansker cursed and decided he would just have to kill the lion. He would have rather tried to match his speed against that of the zebra, but you had to take what you got.
The lion let loose with a roar that was meant to freeze Sansker in his tracks, but Sansker was all to familiar with scare tactics. He jumped at the lion before it could get fully into its jump, bowling it over onto its back. He planted one foot on its rib cage and thrust himself into the air, clearing the swinging range of the lion's talons not a moment too soon. He landed in the reeds on the other side of the lion and quickly dropped out of sight. The lion got to its feet again and scanned the vicinity for him.
Sansker pulled one hand close to his chest and flexed it. Two inch long claws burst from his fingertips. He decided that he would just tear its heart out, a nice clean puncture that would leave the skin in good enough shape to hang on his wall at home. He tensed for his next jump. A blinding light suddenly turned the darkness into day. The lion bolted and disappeared into the surrounding darkness.
Sansker looked up to see the transport shining it's spotlight on him. It lowered to the ground, the turbines turning the water hole into a fine spray. Light burst from the side of the ship as the door opened to reveal Frederick.
"What the hell do you think you're doing? I thought I made it clear that I didn't want to see you until dawn."
"I'm sorry, sir." said Frederick. "It's very important. I'm afraid that your building in Washington DC has been attacked. It's bad, sir."
The ship was headed at full thrust for Washington when Sansker stepped out of the shower. He threw his towel on the bed and picked a pair of boxers from the clothes laid out for him on the bed.
"Ok, what do we know?" he asked.
"Not much." said Carl. "Washington police answered a burglar alarm an hour ago. It's mid afternoon there. Every body in the facility was dead, human and vampire alike. That's all I know now. The police said there were more than thirty bodies all together."
Sansker cinched his belt and said, "I don't understand, why was the burglar alarm on? It's the middle of the day."
"Maybe the killers turned it on. Maybe they wanted the bodies found."
From his medicine cabinet, Sansker pulled out a tube of sun block which he began to rub all over his head and face. When he was finished he covered his hands with it. It left him with a very life like, even tan.
He was pulling on his shoes when the transport slowed down to land atop the Kasner Industries building in Washington DC. He checked himself one last time in the mirror before following his men out into the bright sunlight.
A police officer was waiting for them on the roof.
"Hello, Mr. Kasner. I'm glad you could make it on such short notice."
"Of course, officer . . . ?"
"Brady, sir. Now if you'll just follow me." He lead them through the doors to the building's stairwells. "I'm afraid the elevators were damaged in the attack. We've been getting our exercise running up and down these stairs today."
They went down a couple of flights and then the officer opened a door that Sansker realized went to his private offices and suites.
"The attackers got in here?" he asked, obviously concerned.
"It almost seems that getting in here was the point of this whole mess. We were hoping you might be able to shed a little light on all this."
He threw open the door that lead into a large dining room that Jan Kasner used to entertain clients. The stench of blood hit Sansker and his body guards before they could even get through the door. He pushed down a guttural growl that popped up the back of his throat and entered the room.
The room had been redecorated in red. Blood covered everything. There was something very big hanging from the chandelier, and it took him a moment to get what it was.
"Anna." he said in a hoarse whisper. "Son of a bitch."
Anna was his pet anaconda that he had raised from an egg. She was one of only five in the whole world.
The snake had been gutted and split from head to the tip of it's tail. Then all forty-five of it's feet had been slung over the chandelier.
"What kind of sadistic bastards would kill my snake?" Sansker wondered aloud.
Officer Brady lead them to the far end of the dining room where a sheet had been hung over one portion of the wall. He grabbed one corner of it and pulled it back so that they could get a good view.
"Any idea what this means?" he asked.
Smeared in the blood on the wall, someone had written this short note:
Dear Sansker,
You weren't here, so I killed the snake that was. I'll meet you back at the snake pit. Officers, I left some of the parts you're missing in some file cabinets of Mr. Sansker's. Sounds like probable cause, doesn't it?
It was signed: Liber
Sansker's lips twitched. He fought the urge to let them curl back to reveal his fangs. It was a full minute before he realized he was feeling intense pain. He looked down at his hands and noticed that they were clenched into tight fists. He had popped his claws without realizing it and they were poking through the back of his hands.
"Son of a bitch." he said and withdrew his claws.
To be continued . . .
So what do you think so far? If you have any comments or curse words, write me at bcampo@hotmail.com I welcome all commetn and r complaints, I just ask that if you tell me that I suck, you tell me why I suck or I'll never learn Nuthin' ! If you liked this story, you will probably like my others. Look for them at Bad Monkey Comics!!!