Mission 12: When Life Has Ceased
Tony clenched his fists as they hurried from the diner. Jack parked in the lot, thankfully, right outside the entrance. They clambered into the vehicle, and the detective cursed as he hastily fumbled with his keys. Once the engine started, he sped through the parking area and out onto the road. Regardless of him being on the force, he put his foot down hard. The roads laid empty, bereft of any vehicles; with their insurgent escape, a small mercy. He glanced at the clock on the dash and read it was nearly three in the morning.
Redgrave remained silent in the passenger seat, seeming far away, lost within his own thoughts. Jack sped up once again, mulling over the situation at hand. If they were wrong and the creature hadn't sought the Ankh, Jack would have to contend with his bullish partner's horrid temper. Regardless, procuring the relic was of the utmost importance, and stowing it away from the vampire's clutches came above all other goals. Lest they failed to stop the vampire from reaching sentience, and bringing about the end of days.
. . .
Christ, the end of days!
Having not read the bible in years, Jack almost felt compelled to make time for it now were it not for the dreaded zealousness of the pious. Knowing what he knew about the existence of these terrible robust things, these insurgent, wicked, sinful creatures that had no business existing; why, he swore at the notion. He wondered how much truth they contained, those holy pages. Something for Jack to explore another day, perhaps.
He ran a red light, realising they were but one block from Blair's apartment building. His heartbeat drummed within his chest, pounding against his ribcage.
The complex came into view, that same slanted post-modern nightmare it was the last time she had forced him to see it, and Jack screeched the car to a stop and jumped out. Redgrave was beside him in seconds, his face upturned as he peered at the tall building.
"Which floor does she live on?"
Jack followed Tony's gaze as he chewed his inner cheek, searching for his memory. "Um, ah . . . what was it, what was it?"
"Think, man," the silver-haired man insisted.
"—Tenth floor! She's on the tenth floor—her apartment's at the end of the hall," he recalled, having only paid a visit to Blair's home one time before.
Jack and Tony pushed through the heavy front doors into the foyer. They saw the elevator dead ahead, but it was out of order. Rage boiled beneath the surface as it forced them to take the stairs. Anselmo silently prayed. Both men made their way to the tenth floor, keeping vigilant in the cramped stairwell for whatever might come. Anselmo, truthfully, didn't know what to suspect. He had hoped, for whatever unlikable bitch she was, that nothing had happened to Blair. He found it harder and harder to care, which bothered the detective immeasurably.
On they trudged up the winding case till they finally reached the tenth floor. Tony burst through the door leading to the hallway. What greeted them was a black-toothed silence. A frigidity hung in the air, winter's kiss freezing the dimly lit hall. No sound, not even from behind these apartment doors, seemed at all to present itself. Not even the stirring of ghosts seemed to be possible in this dead place. Still, Dante quickly made his way to the first apartment door and found it unlocked. He pushed the door open and found the innards to be pitch black, but the mess inside soon made itself clear to his inhuman vision; slaughter. Shit. It was already there.
"What do you see?" Jack whispered.
"Dead family, two girls and a man. No blood drained."
Jack broke into a sprint past the apartment doors lining the way.
They reached Blair's apartment and with bated breath came harsh pressure on his lungs; the officer lifted his hand to knock.
A hand grasped his wrist and stopped him.
"Don't be silly," Tony grumbled, pushing past him, his hands grasping the door. He twisted the handle and rammed the door simultaneously.
With a resounding click, the door opened, and the two men entered cautiously. What met them was pure darkness and silence. Jack crept forward slowly, pistol drawn, comforted by the feel of the cool metal, his palm brushing the wall for guidance while seeking a light switch. He felt Redgrave brush past him just as his fingers found the light switch, the sudden illumination near blinding. He had to blink a few times. As his sight restored itself, what he saw he recognized to be horrific.
Anselmo gagged and turned away, fighting back the bile rising in his throat. They had been too late, after all.
Jack heaved, clutching the wall for support. He saw, stark against the once-brilliant white walls, like the work of an artist, broad splashes of crimson beside pieces of her body torn apart and flayed. Some of her had simply become starch, crushed down into gore, while her torso had gutted and hung from the ceiling, her entrails spilling out of her belly above a very much developed and unborn fetus that laid lifeless across the hardwood flooring. Her head stared at them from the counter, screaming madly with electric eyes, chunks of her cheeks missing. Eyelids scratched away, rubbed red and raw, sclera-veins filled by blood.
His stomach churned as his palms became slick with perspiration.
Jack had attended some grisly crime scenes in his career, though nothing compared to the calibre of carnage before him now.
The anguish and terror Blair would have suffered. Her death had been neither quick nor clean. It was clear by the striations in the blood's trajectory that each wound, every limb torn, had been a slow, slow dance of horrid pain. The creature had tortured her, agonizingly prolonged the woman's death.
Tony himself couldn't help but feel appalled. He caught sight of Blair's hands, ripped savagely from the wrists, split in half and arranged like coffee-table ornaments. One arm hung over her television screen like a discarded piece of clothing, and both her legs had been ground to mash, bones mercilessly torn out and used to spike her carcass to the ceiling. It was a horrid thing, something unimaginable, horrid and unforgivable. He knew by reputation this Blair wouldn't feel missed, but to be killed this way. To be defiled by a creature of the night.
Jack retched at his side, his eyes streaming with tears as he held back his reflex.
A storm had begun outside. Thunder shook the building and lightning flashed, struck a transformer up top.
The lights flickered, and fritz'd. Electrical hum poured through from smoking sockets as the power swiftly cut out and the building shuttered black as space.
"Gimme a torch," Tony whispered, and the officer plucked one from his coat pocket.
The flashlight illuminated Blair's lost child. It had been roughly four months gestated. She hadn't known, Redgrave guessed. Not much beside the corpse to go on, but she didn't seem prepared to change her lifestyle, and working out likely masked the steady changes her body was undergoing. Wasn't big enough yet. He observed on the baby that its eyes unseeing had slashed out from its malleable head, tearing flesh wide open, jaw slack with unborn horror, the last expression spoken plainly of the terror at being ripped from the womb.
And Redgrave searched in vain for a glimpse of the Ankh. Rage scoured through him, eyes unknowingly glistening scarlet.
"Bloodsucker got what it came for," the hunter declared. "The Ankh ain't here."
"So . . . you think she suffered at all?" Jack asked, almost sarcastically, as he stepped over one of Blair's severed limbs.
"Oh. No, why do you ask?" Redgrave replied. This was more than animalistic brutality. This was sadistic.
Guilt wracked Jack's being like a boxer's lasting punch. His knowing that Blair withheld that one piece of evidence surely made him accountable for her brutal end.
"God damn it," he lamented angrily. His words echoed in the quiet air "God fucking damn it! She was a royal bitch, but she didn't deserve this."
"Shhh!" the hunter enforced.
A deep silence filled the surrounding space. Tony stiffened ahead of him, the man's posture becoming alert. It was a manner that Jack had yet to observe in him.
A guttural, gravelly groan shattered the silence. The hairs on Jack's arms stood to attention. Goosebumps rose on his skin. His limbs locked in place. Icy fear tingled his spine. He seized in place entirety. Fog clouded vision. Cold. Chill swept across the room, Redgrave placing one finger over his mouth. Didn't have to tell Jack. Dante knew something was wrong as soon as the lights blew out. Everyone on this floor was dead. The creature had found intelligence. And baited them in for the kill.
Perhaps Jack's next actions were because of shock or stupidity, or possibly morbid curiosity he'd been unable to quell since Tony's charming enlightenment to the evil that roamed the earth.
Almost like slow motion in film, Tony watched as Jack turned on the spot and looked up in the corner behind them, in the kitchen behind the counter where Blair's severed head rested, and waited.
Redgrave shined the light.
Viscous gristle dripped from its bloodstained maw. Those eyes glowed scarlet mania, shark-toothed smile splitting its face in half as Jack put up his pistol.
"Die!" he screamed, and fired off all he had, but a laugh was all he heard as it lunged off its perch and reached for his throat. Anselmo thought he knew what fear felt like, but that thing screeching deep laughter in his face felt like flying into the lungs of hell. When life has ceased, death becomes the domination. Cannot the kingdom of man understand these grotesqueries? No, they could not.
And yet Jack did not die.
He stood for a moment, flinched in fear, knowing what should have come, and yet it hadn't. He opened his eyes and saw the malformed creature hung above, graying hide stretched over its elongated face, screeching inhuman things, skeletally thin, its features sharp, needle-like teeth dripping drops of crimson upon the floor at his feet. The palpitations of his heart rate threatened to tear through his chest.
Redgrave stood between them, hand clasped around its throat, holding it back from reaching for the next victim.
Time became a frozen fragment as the three faced off, the moment stretching as the light beam from Jack's flashlight spluttered, dimming, dimming before winking out darkness enveloping the occupants of the apartment. Anselmo heard movement, what sounded above like a scraping and tap, tapping of claws as the creature scurried across the ceiling from a horrid wound inflicted squelching flesh and horrid scream, waking Jack from his frigid-comatose. The man dove to a nearby couch and took cover, reloading his clip and grasping his fallen flashlight. It skid across the floor towards the spattered furniture, and his eyes had adjusted enough to know its shape. He shook the damn thing, and it powered on. A warm amber filled the apartment, illuminating the vampires' descent from the ceiling.
Tony lunged across the room after it, his fist having knocked out the creature's blackout affect, and with blade in hand, stuck forward with a stinger. He missed as it spun across the sink, slashing at his face with razored talons that flecked blood across the ground, and he twisted and fired shots through the veil of darkness as it sucked out the light once more; however, his vision remained undisturbed. He hit it thrice with two slugs from Ebony and another from Ivory.
The creature floundered off from the primary room into the bath hall.
Its putrid breath spread like dust upon a plagued field of crops, and Dante fanned his face as the officer took aim and fired into hall three shots. He heard a spatter and knew he'd hit it; the beast roiling from injury in the bath as Redgrave pursued it, narrowly avoiding another swoop of clawed hands. Tony was seconds faster. He fired shots in rapid succession at the creature's gray hide, a blood chilling snarl ripped through the air, the bullets leaving nothing more than deep purple bruising upon the vampire's torso.
Needed more bite in his shots. Just fine. He confronted it in the adjoining room.
The vampire finally stood at the full height, towing over the hunter by another head or so.
Ferocious scarlet eyes settled upon the hunter's own glistering blue.
"Let's dance, pally," Redgrave growled, and they clashed in spectacular fashion.
He bashed Rebellion's handle at the chest and sent it lurching back through sliding glass doors. Flesh lacerated, and it howled, hand grasped at the edge of Dante's blade as he partially cleaved through its neck. The beast wrenched back the weapon from the open wound, flesh restoring itself. It threw its side into his middle; backward, he stumbled. Ragged hands grasped his collar and threw him at the wall beside it. At that moment, both their eyes became twins with one another, rage-filled faces plying one another for release. The hunter hurled his knee at its stomach. Grip loosened. Thumb to eye. Brays of a wild beast came from its throat. And into its open mouth, Tony shoved a flask.
It flung the hunter to the left into the fractured shower tub, but a bullet hit that flask before it could reach.
Steam rose as holy water burst down its windpipe, scorching its throat and inspiring flailing rage as Anselmo took fired bullets into its back.
It tore broken glass from its mouth and caught Rebellion's broad edge before it could decapitate them. Dante resisted the push away, and they stayed like that, face to face, Vampiric hands bleeding, holding steady the blade from its throat, staring down one another as an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object.
And it growled its first words in many eons, "You are no ordinary man."
"Damn right," he replied.
The Vampire smiled at that fight, and threw him away, back into the tiled wall of the shower, head bashed on a steel frame that supported now-shattered glass panes. Tony remained dazed for a moment. The creature advanced, but more gunshots stopped him in his tracks. Turning around, he strode slowly to the officer, his claws mighty fine and well-sharpened, dark foul shadow looming over Jack as he struggled to reload. Inch by inch, it came closer and closer.
"Shit!" Anselmo belched.
"—You might wanna take cover, Jack."
The warning came from the bathroom doorway.
He followed it.
The Vampire glanced behind it and saw Dante lift the can of hairspray and take aim, press the trigger, and spark the lighter.
A jet stream of fire flared to life, dragon's breath from a tongue of smoker's old habit, engulfing the creature in revolting light. Agonised screeches filled the air, as the undead thing twisted and flung itself back against the wall, scorched skin pounding repeatedly, Dante unrelenting, his spray of flames turning with the creature as it looked to flee. Anselmo fell beside the counter, scrambling back, clip finally set into place and loaded. He fired more shots as the Vampire bellowed and crashed out through the window. Its fire-licked figure twisted in descent, leaving blackened footsteps on the saturated carpet. The devil hunter rushed to the window, soon accompanied by the shell-shocked policeman.
Their sight transfixed itself on the street, scanning for the fleeing demon. But they couldn't. It had gone.
The only thing was rain, ice cold rain, and thunder.
"Jesus Christ!" Jack spat, watching the sky.
"Crummy time to rain," the devil hunter said.
The officer exhaled raggedly and rolled his eyes at the comment.
"Do you know where it went?" the detective asked.
"Not at all, but I know how to find out."
To Be Continued