After interviewing George Hunt and members of the Golden Rifles Association, Anna Van Helsing heads off to the U.S./Mexican border. The information she got was that the one called the Bride of Dracula was responsible for Louis King's death. As you may remember Louis King was the second-in-command of the vampire clan Wings of Darkness. The man in charge of the Golden Rifles Association, Steve Hopkins, recalls one night in 1988 where he and his team came across a young female vampire weilding a sword. This girl was strong against silver nitrate bullets and stakes. This was information that caught Anna Van Helsing's attention, but with all the info she gathered up so far she could not make a connection to Mina Harker. Anna rides to the border to search for a group of bounty hunters in hopes to finding the true identity of the Bride of Dracula. Forgive me if my Spanish is bad, but it's been so long I've left school.
Chapter 8
I'm dashing down the Interstate 5 highway, doing 54 miles per hour in Southwest Los Angeles, being careful not to pass the speeding limit. There are a million thoughts running through my mind as I ride down that road that leads me to the U.S./Mexican border. It wouldn't be the first time I'd cross the border. Two years prior when I was in the earliest days of my vampire hunting I crossed the border with Danny and a group called the Red Doves in hot pursuit for three vampire elders that were part of the leadership of the vampire clan The Neuntoters. I crossed the border several times already so I have a lot of experience of what goes on in the many towns that lie along the border. It was very dangerous over there. Vampires were the ones that mostly roamed in these towns. They would use the small human population as their cover. Lots of weapons would be piling up in these places. The vampires would often use the border as a big smuggling route to ship weapons to various vampire clans in the U.S. They've infiltrated the Border Patrol so passing these dangerous weapons would be a breeze for them. Vampires were also helping to stop the flow of illegal immigrants from crossing into the U.S. by snatching up any poor dick head that had the balls to cross that shit hole of a border and killing them. I didn't know of any vampire hunter that set up shop in Mexico. I was fluent in Spanish so I wouldn't have any problems with communicating with the local population. It's just that I was in this alone. Nobody was by my side when I took this dangerous route to Mexico. I've engaged with vampires that were armed with weapons the U.S. Army would use; all kind of rifles, rockets and heavy machine guns. I would often be outgunned and outnumbered along with Danny or some other bunch of vampire hunters. I'm telling you the border is the Wild West. I would see people walking around just like that with guns hanging out their pants. Men even women and children would be carrying the best guns on the market. I didn't thought I would survive with only two pistols and twelve magazine clips. I had to conserve.
Before you know it I take another road that leads to the Mexican Border. As I ride down this long deserted road another thought crosses my mind: the info I gathered up so far. In two incidents the name Mina Harker pops up: one in the killing of six members of the vampire clan Damien's Hand and two in killing of Donavon Bradley, the leader of The Kin of Ekimmu. While keeping surveillance on the leader of the vampire clan The Omnipotent, Nicolas White, I discovered that someone called the Bride of Dracula was responsible for killing Gabriel Heinrich, the leader of Neo Lunar and Louis King, the second in command of The Wings of Darkness. How does she do it? How can the Bride of Dracula suck the blood of other vampires? She killed Gabriel Heinrich by sucking out his blood, but Gabriel Heinrich wasn't the only vampire she did this to. George Hunt, the leader of the vampire hunting group The Golden Rifles Association described how he and his team found other vampires in the same way Gabriel Heinrich was. Their bodies were all dried up and they had tooth marks in their necks. What I really wanna know is how she killed Louis King? Furthermore, how did a vampire with close ties to the lord of vampires, Dracula, was able to survive all these years without detection from other vampire hunters? How exactly can a vampire transfer his blood into a human's blood system? The only thing I know is that a human can become a vampire if a vampire sucks the human's blood. I don't know anything about vampires engaging in blood transfusion with humans. One more thing, how could there be a vampire that's not weak against silver nitrate? Steve Hopkins, the one who's in charge of the Golden Rifles' operations said he and his team pumped rounds and rounds of silver nitrate bullets into this vampire girl and this girl even got stabbed in the heart with a silver stake. That girl was supposed to be a pile of ash and dust but none of the bullets killed her, not even the stake. Hopkins said all of her injuries just healed up. In return the girl killed half of Hopkins' team with a sword. God, I'm telling you, thinking about a young female vampire who can't be killed by any vampire hunter and who carries a big sword scared me shitless. I sure didn't want to come across this girl. If it were so I had be armed with a nuclear warhead because I was sure that twelve magazine clips loaded with silver nitrate bullets wouldn't do me any good against this girl.
It takes an estimated thirty minutes for me to arrive in the outskirts of this town called Cuidad Puebla . This place is broken down, unemployment is in record numbers and hookers roam wild in the streets. I can hear one or two people speaking Spanish. They're having a big argument. The translation I can make is "What the fuck you doing sleeping with my wife, motherfucker?" I shake my head and laugh, then I ride on. I was very tired, tired from a long ride from downtown L.A. to Mexico. The time I arrived near Cuidad Puebla it was already after sunset. My eyes were getting heavy when suddenly I looked up and realized I was approaching a motel. Heaven. I think I'll stay here for the night. After parking my bike outside I went inside to pay for a room. Luckily for me the owners of the motel accepted no more than $5 U.S. I looked around the lobby and saw three Latino men and one Latino woman walking pass me and smiling. Rather than accepting the warm welcome I felt very uncomfortable. I walked up the stairs, then down the hall and found the place where I would be staying for the night: room 306.
After washing up I undressed to my vest and my pants and threw myself in bed. I laid there twisting and turning. God is it hard to get any sleep in a bed that doesn't belong to you. I hate it when I'm in situations like this. I think about Danny, about what he was probably doing at that moment. Even though it was pretty much a love-hate relationship between us I was hoping that he was alright. I was hoping that he wouldn't get hurt on a certain mission because I knew if that happened I wouldn't be at his side. I wouldn't even know what happened to him because I had nothing to contact him with. I relieved myself of all communication equipment because I didn't want Danny to be on my ass all of a sudden when I'm in a shit hole like this. I wouldn't be able to come up with a good answer as to what my whereabouts were, if you know what I mean. What if he does make a call and I'm not there, not there to answer? He'd start getting suspicious. God I hope that doesn't happen.
I then started to think about what lied ahead in my journey to find out who's Mina Harker. I closed my eyes seeing if I could get some sleep as well. There were now three people I was after: Mina Harker, the Bride of Dracula and a young female vampire with a sword who's immune to silver nitrate. What do these three have in common? Let's start with Mina Harker. In two cases it seems that the vampires are scared shitless of this girl. What are her tactics? What group does she belong to? About the Bride of Dracula, exactly how can a vampire feed on vampire blood? Why is she so different from other vampires? Well, for one thing she was the woman in Count Dracula's life. Behind every successful man there's woman. Let's turn to the girl that Steve Hopkins and his comrades came across way back in 1988. This was a vampire that couldn't be killed by silver nitrate bullets and one stake. How could it be? Who is this girl anyway? How come she wasn't picked up by any other vampire hunter? One more question, could Mina Harker, the Bride of Dracula and this sword wielding female vampire be one group of vampire hunters? One may come to this conclusion because they all seem to be extraordinary and at least two of them are feared by the vampires…..Now how could I be so sure of that? The buck doesn't stop here. I need to get more info, first thing tomorrow.
I turned to my left to a closed window with the full moon shining bright as day. I laid there on my side for about five minutes, trying my very best to get some sleep. Apparently the moon was keeping awake. Suddenly the moon was blocked from my face and I felt two cold hands touch my right arm and I heard someone breathe very close to my ear. I opened my eyes to see the torso of a man in front of me and I looked up to see the man trying to reach for my neck. This man had fangs and his eyes were glowing yellow. I reached under my pillow and pulled out my H&K USP pistol and fired seven shots into the man's body at close range. The man dropped to floor into one pile of ash and dust. This guy was a fucking vampire. I sat up and saw another man standing at the door, a Latino man whose eyes were yellow and he also had fangs. He yelled "Motherfucker!" in Spanish and pulled out a UZI. I fired five shots and the guy turned into ash and dust. There was a drawer next to me which had my other H&K USP pistol and my twelve magazine clips. I grabbed my weapon and ammo and threw on my trench coat. Before you know it here comes two other Latinos busting in the room, one armed with a twelve gage shotgun and another armed with an H&K MP 5K submachine gun. These guys were also vampires. In an instant I fired three shots at the one armed with the H&K MP5K and he fell down dead in a pile of ash and dust. I swung and fired four shots at the other Latino vampire who fired his shotgun blindly and soon became nothing but burning ash and dust. My gun was out of ammo and I soon put in a new clip and ran out of the room barefooted.
Stepping out of my room I ended up in the long hallway with my bare feet on the cold floor with my gun pointed straight in front of me. I suddenly heard multiple voices speaking Spanish growing louder and louder down the hall. I heard loud footsteps coming up the stairs. Suddenly about three Latino men appeared, one armed with an H&K MP5, another one armed with a M4 Carbine rifle and the last one armed with a UZI pistol; another batch of vampires. I was able to fire three shots that took out the one armed with the UZI. I then ran to the end of the hall and took cover on the left side. I slid and fell on my ass and turned into the hall and fired five shots at the Latino vampires' position. They fired back chipping away pieces of the wall from where I was taking cover. This situation was awfully similar to another situation: the raid at Louis King's house. Dejavu. I got up and ran down the other hall and hid behind the wall. I could hear the pounding of footsteps on the wooden floor as I heard the men come closer to my position. At that moment I pulled out one of the silver stakes that was tucked in my coat. I squeezed onto it tight as I could almost sense one of the men coming close. With both hands I swung the stake into the hall not knowing what to hit. I felt my hands stop and I saw that the stake was in one of the vampires' chest. He screamed as he turned into ash and dust. The other one then came and I grabbed onto his neck and jumped on his back. This guy was pretty big and I was pretty small, but I wasn't gonna let go. The Latino bloodsucker spun around and fired his H&K MP5 aimlessly around the hall. He started banging me against the walls and I tried to choke him with his weapon. When he started to bang my head against the wall I thought that was the last straw. I pulled out another stake and drove it in his chest from above. The way he was banging me against the wall I found it hard to dig it deep in. In order to kill vampires you have to drive the stake straight in his heart but I was only halfway. I held on tight on the stake as the vampire continued to bang me against the wall. Suddenly he screamed in pain and turned into ash and dust and I came down with him. He was finally dead. I landed right on top of his burning remains and screamed in pain. Motherfucker, this shit burns! I then got up and ran down the hall, all the way to the lobby.
Running down the stairs on my two bare feet I found myself back in the lobby. It was quiet. No one was even behind the desk. From there I thought I was safe. Suddenly I heard a bullet ricochet off a wall and then I heard machine gunfire coming from the opposite direction aimed right at me. I dived over the desk and suddenly the gunfire stopped. I rose slowly and saw the opened front door that led to the outside. Outside was empty with nothing but a few passing cars and some streetlights. Suddenly the gunfire started again. I dived for cover as bullets chipped away pieces of the concrete desk and the wall. I moved from behind the desk staying low and ran into a nearby room. I locked the door and hid behind a desk then all of a sudden the gunfire stopped once more. The room was so small with nothing but a chair and a desk. This room turned out to be an office. I suddenly heard the door knob clicking as if someone was trying to open the door. The clicking stopped and what followed was machine gunfire as bullets blasted through the door. There was a thud and the door swung open violently to reveal a Latino woman armed with what appeared to be two Beretta M93R machine pistols. This woman looked familiar. She was one of the friendly occupants who gave me a smile which made my blood crawl. This woman also turned out to be another motherfucking vampire. She started looking around and sniffing. I forgot; vampires have an advanced sense of smell to pick up the scent of humans. She then turned to my direction. I think she spotted me. I then appeared in her presence, lying on my side pointing my gun up to her. "Drop the guns, Bitch!" I yelled in Spanish. "Drop the fucking guns right now!"
"Freeze, bitch! You're fucking dead!" she responded.
"DROP 'EM! DROP 'EM RIGHT FUCKING NOW!
"I'M PULLING THE TRIGGER, BITCH! I'M GONNA BLOW YOUR FUCKING BRAINS TO KINGDOM COME!"
Back and forth we yelled at each other at the top of our lungs. It lasted for about ten seconds. This had to end. I knew I had a better chance at pulling the trigger first but then again, this chick wasn't fucking around. All the while I was scared shitless, but at the same time I tried my best not to show it because as a vampire that woman could sense my fear and use it against me. We both kept yelling at each other, pointing the gun at each other's faces. Suddenly there were about seven gunshots. Multiple gunshot wounds entered the woman's body and she fell dead into a pile of ash and dust. I then heard multiple footsteps running my way. I got up and saw two Latino men entering the office, one armed with a Walther P99 pistol and the other one armed with a UZI. Looking at them closely I realized they were humans. "Are you alright?" the one with the smoking Walther P99 said to me.
"Yeah," I said. "Who are you guys?"
"We're members of Rojas la Noche. I'm Perez Morales and this Enrique Manuel. We're vampire hunters."
"Well, Yo soy Anna Van Helsing."
"You're American?"
"Yeah."
"But you speak Spanish."
"Well I've been in and out of Mexico hunting vampires just like you guys."
"You're a vampire hunter too?" asked Enrique Manuel.
"Yeah," I said. "How did you guys know I was in trouble?"
"We didn't," said Perez Morales. "We've been keeping surveillance on this place for a long time now. This is a motel where vampires take up victims."
"Really?" I said. I then thought "Well how come I didn't know that the whole fucking time?"
"You're really lucky to be alive. We came as soon as we heard you arguing with the bitch. She happens to be the member of a vampire clan we've been tracking down. Is there any reason why you're here?"
"We'll I'm in Mexico to find these bounty hunters called The Road Dogs. They may have some vital information on some weird shit that's been happening in L.A."
"Well come to our place and you can talk all about it."
I was able to put on my shoes and follow Perez Morales and Enrique Manuel who led me to their way of travel. "You dig bikes too?" I said.
"Always have and always will," said Morales. We all started up our engines and sped away to what would be their casa.