Hearts of Stone (Chapter ONE)
Copyright A. J. Gallant
All rights reserved
Special thanks to Piers Anthony
No part of this novel may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Purchase only authorized editions. This book is a work of fiction. Characters, names, incidents, and places are the author’s imagination or used fictitiously.
“The strange thing about growing old
is that the intimate identification with
the here and now is slowly lost.
One feels transposed into infinity, more or less alone.”
Albert Einstein
CHAPTER ONE
DRACULA: HEARTS OF STONE
THE SUICIDE RATE had never been higher, and the city’s morale had never been lower.
The New York night was alive with traffic and harsh noises. It was brighter than the stars in the sky and almost as beautiful. The massive buildings made some people feel inconsequential and a little like mice. The bright lights were overwhelming to first-time visitors. The place seemed like a monster to tourists from small towns accustomed to country life. And from space, the Metropolis was bustling as it marched toward its unknown destiny. It was fascinating and a great place to explore—genuine treasures were found if one looked hard enough. Stretch limos held actors from the stage and the big screen. The traffic was both annoying and intriguing.
It was a city scrutinized by the whole world.
But now, it was an atmosphere of fear and unpleasantness. Faces were stressed and uncomfortable. Multiple sirens wailed from different parts of the city. Dreams were shattered, and minds set to oblivion. Thoughts were racing with unpleasant scenarios of horror. Nightmare scenarios were numerous. People’s hearts were torn between hoping for a better future and fearing a future that would perhaps be even more corrupt and ruthless. Hope was almost always suspected of being false. The future pointed to a harsh existence where one’s life was cut short without noticing ill health. It was trying times of suspect and confusion.
The year 2011 was shaping up to be a wicked one. The weather added discomfort to an already uncomfortable situation. The humidity made it feel like a hundred degrees, combined with the pollution that hung over the area. It made for a restless evening. Perspiration stuck to red faces like stamps on envelopes, except that stamps were useful. A warm, stagnant air saturated the entire city. The wind was light and ineffective. The cruel nature of the weather was torturous. The statue of liberty would have submerged to cool off if she could have managed it. Rolling blackouts added to the despair, with the dark never more gloomy. Vampires were knocking out power grids to make the night more mysterious and challenging and facilitate the hunting of humans. Three or four hours without electricity to power the air conditioners seemed like days.
Vampire sheriffs were patrolling the night but, unfortunately, were outnumbered. Their presence in certain areas appeared sufficient for the vicious biters to avoid those areas, but they had insufficient numbers to cover such a great place. Their courage and dedication were admired by many, yet some were suspicious of their ultimate motives. The bad ones just avoided the areas where it was likely that a red sheriff would hunt them. Some could sense the sheriffs; others had to rely on word of mouth to avoid certain places patrolled by the law. The red sheriffs banded together when necessary to protect humans from lurking monsters.
The night was scarier than it had ever been.
It appeared that the creation of evil vampires now occurred daily, and even though plenty of good biters also existed, they now scrutinized with apprehensive eyes. And was it possible for the good ones to turn evil? The scales of justice were toppled heavily to the left because of all the unsolved murders. Hearts pounded at the realization that vampires were in their neighborhood. Some worked in their stores and tended their children, checked against the myriad of vampires wanted for murder.
“Look at that!” said the old man to his wife near the Broadway theater, having just watched The Lion King. He kicked the skeletal remains to the side. “That was not there when we went inside. New York is going to hell with those crazy vampires.”
Some days more than fifty people were being slaughtered in New York City alone. Wanted posters were turning into wanted novelettes. An atmosphere of anxiety and uneasiness smothered many cities and towns worldwide. Vampires had made themselves known and weren’t about to remain inconspicuous entities any longer. Unique cameras to detect the vampires popped up everywhere and were now big business; even some vampires had invested in them.
The brutes slunk into the night like rapists on the prowl for fresh young meat. Every shadow contained the possibility of death and horrible mutilation. Here there were genuine monsters that waited for an opportunity. Some wouldn’t delay or couldn’t wait, preferring to take their possibilities and turn them into probabilities. Someone was always foolish enough to wander the streets after dark as if walking in a group made any difference to vampires. It was merely six chicken nuggets instead of one. The people of New York, in particular, were a stubborn breed and not inclined to be bullied, even by vampires. But the numbers were adding up, and the people insisted that the government do something to stop them.
A ninety-year-old woman shouted out her Bronx apartment window into the darkness. “Get the hell out of here, you vicious bastards! I see you!” She was in her blue butterfly nightdress with curlers in her white hair. Clara shouted at no one in particular; she thought it would make the concealed vampires flee upon hearing her voice if there were some in the area. It had succeeded one night, so she now repeated the process to such an extent that she was becoming exhausted, losing much-needed sleep. She shouted on the hour, every hour that she managed to stay awake. Clara had even attempted to stake her husband one midnight hour; because he had told her in jest that he was a vampire. He now resided in the Bailystoker nursing home, where she visited him once a month, always carrying a stake in her big black purse, just in case. This night, she managed to annoy a raccoon attempting to get into a garbage can and two rats nearby, but no vampires were frightened. The poor woman eventually dozed with her head partially out of the fifth-story window.
Edgy people stared out of their windows into their depths of being. What if tonight was their last night? How painful was death by a vampire? What if they turned into one of the undead creatures themselves? Would they end up eating their neighbors? Would they have their relatives over for lunch? People feared strangers more than ever, and the number of accidental shootings was higher than ever.
Opened spaces to the nocturnal air seemed useless, equally saturated in or out without an air conditioner. The warm current was stifling and greedy with moister. The night was a sassy antagonist not opposed to gushing blood or screams from the innocent. It concealed without judgment the things that went on under its dark sky. Most noises now made most people jump, even the rough ones. Collective sighs rolled throughout the state, escaping through frustrated mouths. Angst was as plentiful as perspiration. Some people had accepted their fate and just waited for death.
Bands of brave mortals patrolled the night with guns that contained wooden-tipped bullets; however, the vampires' velocity might was usually adequate to take care of those courageous human defenders. They tried their best to defend their neighborhoods and, on occasion, succeeded, but the gangs were often killed and eaten. Some had direct lines to the sheriffs that had saved them multiple times, although sometimes it was too late. The sheriff would arrive to discover the bodies and horrible scenes of blood and gore littering the sidewalks.
An optimistic future was becoming more and more difficult to envision. Hope had turned into a nasty four-letter word. Tempers rose like millions of see-through kettles boiling without the possibility of turning the heat down. People all over the city feared being pursued by dark shadows. A young couple had driven off the cliffs at Sodus Point Inn, where he thought the man behind his car in a black coat was a vampire, and they ended up drowning in the lake. With almost eight hundred languages spoken, it was one of the most linguistically diverse cities on the planet, with some areas a little like the ambiance around the tower of Babel. And everyone talked about those damn vampires.
Those who managed to nap awoke from nightmarish visions of bloody fangs pursuing them.
Two male teenagers stood on 46th and 7th Avenue. They were high on liquor and marijuana and were afraid of nothing. One had a Smith and Wesson .357 tucked into his belt under his shirt. The other relied on his friend’s ability to secure his safety and always walked home after twilight with his friend. They had youth on their side, which was no protection against the biters. Of course, they were more foolhardy than brave; they risked their lives nightly and now felt quite comfortable after dark.
“It’s a quiet night, man.” Ace was more or less a happy fellow with brown hair down to his shoulders. He was in an Eat Me rock band, and the entire group had about as much talent as a piece of pine wood.
“It’s those stupid vampires. Can’t even find someone to pinch.” Henry was the band’s drummer, but they were so bad they got tired of themselves. One could only scream for so long. A group needed to mesh, and they hadn’t accomplished that.
“Never even seen a vampire. You?” Ace considered what he said. “Maybe I saw one. They’re not so easy to spot when they act normal. I mean, you could be a vampire. How would I know unless you showed me your fangs or picked up a car?”
“Yeah, no. All over the news, but I ain’t seen one in person. Maybe it’s all a bunch of crap!”
A bat hung upside down from a nearby building, listening intently and smiling slightly at their ramblings. The light caught its eyes just right and illuminated them. It adjusted its position ever so slightly.
“I’ll blow the damn thing away if I ever see one—bang, bang, bang. Pete has the skeletal remains of a vampire hanging on his wall. They could be fake, but they look real.”
Ace took a drag of his weed and then passed it to Henry. “What the shit is that?”
The bat flew down between them as they both backed up several feet. Ace took the gun out and fired four shots at it but missed it and put three bullets into his friend’s chest. Henry fell dead onto the sidewalk as the bat morphed into a vampire. He knocked out of his hand as the vampire enjoyed that Ace was now hyperventilating and ready to pass out from fear. Ace was so frightened that he couldn’t run. He couldn’t move an inch.
“What do we have here? I like the taste of fear. Therefore, you should be delicious, my fine fellow.
Ace managed to glance down at the gun, but that was it. The biter tore into his throat and commenced to drink his blood. He swallowed noisily and turned as he ate, scanning the area for red sheriffs. It was like drinking the most exceptional wine. Blood splattered onto the sidewalk, with some landing on the shiny Smith and Wesson.
Many silhouettes of the undead concealed themselves in the obscurity of the night, and the steamy atmosphere didn’t oppress them. They waited with the patience of a three-thousand-year-old Great Basin bristlecone pine tree. They were ever vigilant for their opportunity to strike. Their hungry eyes glowed red when they permitted them to do so. Over eight million souls fed energy and personality into the United States' largest Metropolis. An almost full moon hung over the city, indifferent in its beauty that usually went unnoticed.
Some New Yorkers slept with shotguns loaded with shells containing oak dust to kill the monsters, and some went off accidentally during the long night. Kids scared the hell out of their parents and thought it was hilarious. Some survived the encounters, and some didn’t. It was awful to live with, accidentally killing their children out of fear. Some lived on past the horrible incidents, and some didn’t.
A single rumble of thunder and rod of lightning teased of rain that would perhaps cool the area, but it produced nothing significant. It was a lot like the shallow promises from the authorities. It sounded good, but the result wasn’t. Then a misty drizzle made the area more sinister, looking as if every shadow contained a monster, and some did. The fog held shades of gray that were like mirages in the desert.
The night was alive with troubled minds and frightened faces.
An aberration of a vampire bat flew over the neo-gothic Brooklyn Bridge spanning the East River; he looked down at the traffic and searched for his opportunity to feed. The bat was three times larger than the standard Desmodus rotundus, with different abilities. The most important being its capacity to transform into the so-called undead. It flew through one of the pointed arches, thoroughly enjoying the sights below. Soaring through the dark sky was pure pleasure. The smell of all those human blood bags was an exciting event, and the heavy traffic was like snakes slithering to their next destination. After several hours of exploring, the bat flew over the Queensboro Bridge and the United Nations Headquarters.
The bat’s wings cut through the warm air as it searched for its prey and could detect human blood from a thousand feet up. Lance preferred people that had consumed rare sirloin steaks because he liked the taste of iron-rich blood and could sense what he wanted from several hundred feet away. Obese people were some of his favorites, and vegetarians were left alone to perish of natural causes. Being a vampire, his echolocation and supernatural vision helped him locate preferable targets. His echolocation didn’t diminish as an ordinary vampire bat and was almost ninety times more potent.
New York City was a spectacular place at night, and the city was mistaken for no other. The skyscrapers impressed upon the humans their smallness, and the bitters made them aware of their vulnerability and mortality. The night was now the enemy to most people, with parking lots lit so brightly that some could barely stand it. The supernatural advantage of the vampires was as an adult fighting a toddler, so no chance to triumph for most humans. Wooden-tipped bullets killed a few, but hesitation in pulling the trigger and mind control was responsible for many more human deaths at the vamps' hands. The creatures were simply too damn fast and powerful.
Circling the city made the vampire feel crazed with bloodlust, mostly since Lance had purposely gone almost a week without partaking to get to that frenzied state. He loved the enthusiasm of his inner monster. The beast enjoyed the uneasiness and anticipation of what was to come and would risk death to taste salty human flesh and blood. After the vampire fed, it would sleep with the contentment of flowers in the sun; otherwise, it was an uneasy slumber. The bat had observed a red transport truck pulled by a Kenworth tractor with a whole load of ice cream in its refrigerated trailer as it pulled off the highway to take on fuel. The bat flew in and hung upside down on the power line leading into the station, watching with the eagerness of a starving lion. The driver’s scent was maddening to the vampire, even from inside the cab. He postponed the attack because he scented a red sheriff in a white Chevy Malibu as he passed on the highway, so he postponed the attack. Those sheriffs could hear a scream a hell of a long distance away.
The vampire continued to pursue the truck from a lofty position. But on First Avenue, the bat morphed and attacked the speeding rig, smashing feet-first through the driver’s side window and feeding on Marty, the driver, with only the briefest scream emitted. Poor Marty was drained and killed in seconds, and his wife would regret their fight that morning for the rest of her life. The heavy truck barrelled out of control into the candy apple red Dodge minivan, instantly killing the family of five, including twin seven-year-old boys. Gravity, velocity, and the weight of the large transport had made the carnage inevitable. It was a horrible scene for all those that would view it.
Being a relatively new vamp, nineteen-year-old Lance Walker stopped to lap blood dripping from the van’s door before fleeing the scene. His long blond hair made him look as though he should have belonged to a heavy metal band. Covered in skull tattoos, he had been a bad boy before being turned, killing dogs, cats, and anything else he could get his hands on, but now was an absolute nightmare. It had been his fifth kill in a month. Lance vanished into the darkness that he was so comfortable with.
Many calls went to the local Red Sheriff station in the Bronx to deal with criminal bloodsuckers trained and approved by Dracula. Few had seen the king in over two decades, and many new vampires even doubted his existence. Wooden-tipped bullets were selling like popcorn at the movies.
Alexander Coleman entered his small white office and saw his Dell laptop computer highlighted with incoming calls. He scratched the thick black hair on his head and rubbed his muscular neck. A photo of Bruce Lee hung above his desk. His female German shepherd Tessy, also a vampire, blurred into the space so rapidly that she knocked The New York Times newspaper onto the floor, pushing the air current to such a degree. She kicked at the dog dish under the sports section and accidentally drove it into the wall; Alexander hadn’t been paying attention and hadn’t had the opportunity to intercept the bowl.
“Tessy, a little slower, please.” He was a big man with such a handsome face that he almost always made the ladies stare, dressed in an ink-black suit with a matching black tie, with a glowing red sheriff’s badge attached above his heart. The pin was electronic, and pressing it would display all pertinent information about him to authorities, including that the Master had trained him. It was also a video recorder.
All the messages from the computer appeared to be from First Avenue, as did several police calls informing him that someone no longer walked the earth. Necessary to turn evil vampires to dust, but there was only so much that a single sheriff could accomplish. As of late, it was hard to get a day off from the nightly carnage. Vampires had been getting out of hand for several years, and still, there was no sign of Dracula. It was as if the Master had abandoned his children.
The dog was as gorgeous as she was intimidating and barked a high-piercing bark. It was her FEED ME bark. She was a mix of two breeds, German Shepherd and Siberian Husky; she took her beautiful coloration from both, although she looked more shepherd and appeared fierce. Tessy was turned by the Master, with no other vampires seemingly capable of turning animals, although he claimed it was something that all biters could accomplish. No one needed vampire dogs running around, adding to the carnage. That was one of the myriads of secrets that Dracula wouldn’t reveal.
“All right, I’ll give you some food, and then we've got to go. Duty calls.”
Alexander pulled the bowl from the wall and placed it on the cupboard by the sink. He opened the fridge, removed two bags of O-positive blood, poured one into the silver dog dish, and drank the other. It was so refreshing that it was like a human dying of thirst, finding a large bottle of cold water in the Mojave Desert. There was nothing like the taste of blood to a vampire.
Tessy stopped and stared into the night, her ear movement indicating she was listening to something. The sheriff placed one hand on his gun and the other on his ancient samurai sword, ambidextrous like all vampires. He looked at the dog’s face and the movement of her ears and knew something was up. Someone kicked the door off its hinges. A crazed biter named Frank Cole was celebrating his two-hundredth birthday. Since he tortured the sheriff’s location out of an off-duty police officer, he decided to celebrate by eliminating one of Dracula’s assistants. And Alexander was one of six legendary sheriffs at that.
Frank drove the sheriff across the room with a kick and was on the sheriff instantly, attacking with a piece of sharpened maple, and then he was on the sheriff. But Alexander held both wrists, stopping him from plunging the wood into his heart when a vicious growl made him turn his head. Frank was appalled and immediately frightened as the dog showed her vampire teeth. He had heard of vampire dogs but had never actually seen one. He thought the dogs were probably mythical beings, but seeing one in the flesh was something else. The assailant was just about to flee and had started to do so when Tessy blurred and grabbed Frank by the throat, biting through his carotid artery; the dog wouldn’t stop until his head came off. His evilness turned to dust in her mouth, and Tessy made faces as she spat out the unwanted grit. Frank’s skeletal remains hit the polished floor.
“Tessy, good girl.”
Alexander blurred onto the crime scene so fast that it made the officer near the minivan go for his gun until he noticed the badge. Some police were handling traffic as two detectives in suits arrived on the scene. Officer Miller recognized Alexander immediately, so verifying that he was a red sheriff wasn't necessary. They had had one episode of a phony sheriff that had caused several officers to lose their lives.
“Miller, how long ago?” Alexander told Tessy to sit, and she did. The dog also sniffed the air as she waited.
“Less than an hour,” said Miller. “Those bastards give me the creeps. What are my chances of killing one with one of these wooden-tipped bullets? I feel like a mouse waiting for a hawk to show up.”
Alexander snapped his fingers and pointed to the area around the minivan where he could see tracks in the blood. “Tessy, go!” The German shepherd immediately started to sniff the area. “Oh, those bullets will kill a vamp; the problem is that we’re almost as fast as a bullet, so if you hesitate, you die. And it has to be a shot to the heart.”
Another officer entered the scene with attitude, below average height with, a husky build, and salt and pepper hair. Detective Braden Carter looked at Alexander with disgust. Braden hated all vampires. “Miller, what the hell is THAT doing here?”
“The government sanctions him, and you know it. You’d be happy to have him here if a bad one appeared.”
Carter placed himself directly before the sheriff and looked up at him. “Do you know how easy it would be for me to kill you?”
“You couldn’t kill your grandmother, little man.”
The dog growled and briefly showed her fangs but then returned to sniffing. The shepherd sensed the detective’s animosity, but she knew his fear would prevent him from acting on it. She barked four high-pitched barks, indicating she had the scent and was ready to pursue it. The dog blurred fifty feet across the street and waited for her Master to follow in pursuit; she could sense the criminal getting further away from the crime scene.
“Vampire, what will you do if you catch the son-of-a-bitch?” Having lost too many family members to them, including his lovely wife Rebecca, Carter wasn’t likely to ever lose his hatred of vampires.
“I’ll kill him, and my badge will record and upload it to the server. His image will be processed and run against other unsolved crimes so that they can be closed.”
Carter hesitated but decided to ask. “Can you take me with you to observe the kill? It’s a government-sanctioned request that I received some time ago. The more we see firsthand, the more we can learn.”
The sheriff looked at the detective and smiled. “I can, but it’s a scary run for a human, and I can’t promise you’ll be safe.”
“Let’s roll!” Carter pretended he wasn’t frightened of what would come, but even the dog could detect his apprehension from across the street. Tessy squatted and urinated to show her disdain, but nobody noticed except for the sheriff.
Alexander placed his hands under the detective’s armpits, lifted him as a father would his child, and blurred with him into the night. The speed and the proximity of seemingly imminent collisions with buildings and cars that never occurred were enough to take the detective’s breath away. They abruptly halted in an area where Lance Walker had stopped to do reconnaissance for his future crimes, where he left a more significant accumulation of his stink behind. Incredibly potent in one area where Carter had vomited his pizza's remnants with the works he had for dinner into a green garbage can. Unless the detective was driving a vehicle, he was prone to car sickness, and all those rapid movements had been too much for him.
The dog blurred with another burst of speed, and the sheriff followed close behind, carrying the nauseous detective; he felt that the sheriff wouldn’t let him forget the events that were transpiring anytime soon. Carter thought it best to curtail his prejudicial ways, at least in front of the sheriff. The night was young enough, and the detective’s survival was uncertain. A human in pursuit of a vampire was tricky business.
Tessy stopped at the entrance of a dark alley and looked back at Alexander; it was the dog’s signal that she had spotted something in the darkness. It was a biter sleeping on the ground like a vagabond. The dog could smell the blood on his herringbone-patterned tweed shirt. Lance gorged himself to such a degree that he was napping. The overindulgence had made him sleepy. Alexander gestured to Carter to be quiet as he approached the slumbering silhouette. Vampires usually woke at the slightest noise.
Lance curled up in a fetal position, facing away from them. Abruptly his eyes flicked open. The sheriff pressed his badge to start the recording as he pulled his ornate samurai sword from its black sheath, gripping the handle skillfully. The serial killer jumped up and went for his dachomies, knives made to kill vamps. The blade was in three parts, razor-sharp stainless steel on both ends with South American Snakewood in the center, capable of killing a vampire as it entered the heart.
Lance jumped twenty feet into the air, ending up against the side of the building, launching multiple knives. The sheriff dodged two, but the detective caught one in the shoulder and went down. The German shepherd pounced and grabbed Lance’s left leg. Alexander jumped and attempted to slice his head off, missing; he instead cut his sternum open and healed almost instantly. The dog released his foot and placed itself at the end of the alley to block his exit; he would have to battle the sheriff where his escape was inaccessible. He also knew that he would be at a disadvantage with the German shepherd on one side and Alexander on the other.
“I’m hurt bad!” Carter shouted.
“Don’t remove the knife; it’ll be over soon.”
That had been enough of a distraction for Lance to hurl more knives, and Alexander dodged them as well, though just barely, with one ending up in Carter’s left leg. He couldn’t believe his luck. “I’m dying here! I need an ambulance!”
“An ambulance won’t approach until this guy is dust.”
The sheriff moved forward with the sword at the ready, and Lance took small steps backward. Alexander thought about demanding his surrender, but they never acquiesced. The killer permitted the whites of his eyes to glow bright red. The dog showed its fangs and let go with a growl so fierce that the criminal didn’t dare take another step. He slowly pulled his sword and considered whether to turn and attack the dog, but while he decided, he didn’t dare take his attention away from the red sheriff. Tessy jumped on the back of his neck, and when he attempted to block it, the sheriff decapitated him, and his epidermis turned to dust. His skeleton clinked as it fell to the pavement.
“We need an ambulance at this location.” The sheriff looked around and wasn’t quite sure of the location. “Use tracking and hurry. We have an officer down.”