Hunting the Vampire
Tim Morrell
Smashwords Edition
Copyright 2011 Tim Morrell
Check for new titles by this author at Smashwords.com
This short story is dedicated to my
Wife and children, whom always believe in me,
My brother Kasey who is a dreamer like me,
And my wonderful girls from Delta Gamma
Sorority at KU who are my biggest fans (Yes this
Includes you Kandy)
The summer evening was hot and humid. It had rained 3 days ago, just enough to heal the cracks in the land and give the farmers enough hope that the crops would not perish this year. The evaporated water in the air made him feel so much hotter than he should, every breath feeling struggled, but he must not take anything off to provide some relief.
Tonight was just an observing mission for Zaden, but he wanted to make sure he had every protection possible. He was hunting some very dangerous prey. He would love to bring this adventure to a happy ending tonight, but he knew he couldn’t risk everything that he had worked so long for. He must stay cold and calculated. No guns blazing scenario for this hero.
The sun had just left the horizon. Now was the time to be vigilant. This creature’s habits were still somewhat foreign to Zaden, so he could appear at anytime. After tonight’s observation was over, Zaden would know exactly when the monster rises and which of the mausolea in this cemetery it goes to hide during the day.
Zaden pulled over his cover and began the waiting game. It’s a simple choice to make, to take cover but make himself that much warmer. It becomes so much harder to breathe, so he has to consciously keep himself controlled with slow easy deep breaths. He cannot afford to make a single breath loud enough to be heard.
For just under an hour he waits. Finally, he hears a vault crack open. He looks and sees the demon that looks like a man slowly creep out of the Burchum family vault. The vampire slowly scans the area.
“Did he just pause in my direction?” Zaden thinks. His breathing comes to a complete standstill as he uses his superior mental control to keep his heart slow, but the bloodsucker continues to scope out the rest of the cemetery.
As the man that is not a man vacates the cemetery, Zaden notes the exact time at 9:45 P.M. He waits an additional 10 minutes before he decides enough time has passed to examine the crypt.
The Burchum mausoleum is the second largest in the cemetery. Large enough that without studying, it would be nearly impossible to know where the killer would be hiding. Zaden studies the mausoleum closely so that he may determine the layout of the building and find which vault the vampire sleeps in. When the time comes, Zaden does not want any surprises.
After convincing himself he had sufficiently gathered all the information he had needed, Zaden slowly made his way to his cheap hotel room. He had a long night ahead of him going through all the information he had on this creature.
Zaden had not been what most would consider a typical vampire hunter, not that he had found very many others that hunted vampires. Zaden differed from the others because he wanted the information. Most hunters found the vampire, attacked and either killed the vampire or made the mistake that led to their own death. Zaden hunted the vampires, captured them, tortured them, and found out every piece of information they had about themselves and others of their kind. When he was finished, he either killed the vampire or let them go so that they may lead him to others of their kind.
It was in this way that he had gathered most of the information about the very monster that he was currently stalking. This vampire was the big prize, the one he had been hoping for his entire career.
“It’s name is Lyon,” Zaden thought. Zaden never liked to call them he or she so that he never humanized them. They were cold-blooded killers and this one was no exception. Lyon was a male of the species, and was the worst type of vampire. Lyon was so merciless that he was known to kill his own kind.
Lyon is one of the oldest vampires Zaden had known still survived. Lore that the other vampires knew about him traced back at least 500 years. Who knows what knowledge about him has been lost through the ages or even how long he has actually existed?
Previous to the last two decades, Lyon was one of the most respected of his kind. He himself was known to be one of the most powerful of his kind due to his age and never being known to sire another. He was the leader of the strongest pack of vampires in their own known history. A brutal killer, he would slaughter several humans a night. Several of his victims he would take long after his blood thirst was satisfied just for the pleasure of killing. His pack would leave a bloody trail wherever they traveled and they traveled constantly. If they stayed in one place too long, they would have devoured their blood supply or have been discovered and hunted.
About twenty years back, his group encountered resistance while they were in South America. The community they attempted to feed on believed in vampires and was ready for them. The humans slaughtered many of Lyon’s herd by taking off their heads, burning them, and even digging them out by the day to let the sun turn the creatures to ash. Only a few survived and those that did dispersed.
Lyon reemerged with a new way to survive. Since the events that separated him from his followers, he has played the haunted soul card. Zaden has over and over again cursed authors such as Anne Rice and Stephanie Meyer for allowing the human race to have sympathy for these bearers of death. Many of others Zaden has received information from actually believe Lyon’s story, but Zaden will never allow himself to fall for it.
As Lyon has overtaken the sensitive vampire role, he has truly shown himself to be the monster he is. To feed his murderous addictions, he has turned to the killing of his own kind. It had somewhat of a perfect genius to it. He could kill and yet be deemed a hero to the human race. The other hunters all believed Lyon to be a true hero saving his tortured soul. Never mind that as far as Zaden was concerned, Lyon surely was still feeding on humans and hiding any evidence of such.
“Ah yes,” Zaden whispered to himself in the not quite so comfortable chair provided with the hotel he was currently calling home, “I have been studying the beast so long. I must get my prize.”
Zaden decided to put away the direct information he had collected about Lyon and once again study everything he had learned about vampires in general. He knew all of this information by heart, but he did not want to make a single mistake when he finally trapped his game.
As much lore as humans have concerning vampires, most still don’t believe they exist. For such a reason, fiction gets written that confuses so much of what is real. Vampires don’t sparkle in the sunlight, and crosses don’t mean much of anything to them. It has taken Zaden many years to find out all of the information he has, and he’s still not sure that all he has is true.
Vampires are superior beings in many ways. When one becomes a vampire, his senses increase approximately twofold. Their strength increases threefold, and the mental capacity increases to unknown heights. They’ve never shown any powers that seem to be ‘magical’ such as flying or shape-changing as has been written in many of the old stories, but they seem to have some unconscious psychic abilities.
There seems to be only two surefire ways of killing a vampire: burning them completely in a fire or by exposing them to the sun, or by taking the head. Taking the head is by far the most effective way to kill them. The stronger the vampire’s blood is the longer it takes to completely burn them in a fire or the sun. While they do go into a comatose style sleep during the sunlit hours, there have been instances where the vampire has woke when in danger and disposed of the situation before being entirely burnt to ashes. The wooden stake through the heart myth isn’t completely unfounded, piercing the heart will greatly weaken them on account of the rapid blood loss. A good well-aimed gun will do it better leaving nothing to keep the blood in. Garlic doesn’t have any effect on them, but many of them pretend to shy from it to further the myth. Other religious symbols, such as holy water, are as ineffective as the cross. They don’t seem to be able to break through a good steel chain.
“Enough!” Zaden says to himself, “I’ve learned everything I’m going to. I need to get some sleep and start preparing my trap.”
Two days later Zaden decides it is the day to collect his bounty. He decides to go to the cemetery at 6:00 P.M. to have enough time before sundown to set up and not so much time that he becomes complacent waiting.
Zaden prepares everything and chooses to hide in the vault above the one Lyon is using. With everything else in place, he pulls out his Glock 17 and prepared to wait.
At 9:30 he hears stirring below him. Lyon slowly crawls out of his vault as Zaden stops breathing to prepare himself. Making sure to keep his heart rate low, Zaden takes aim. In four rapid-fire shots, Zaden takes out each of Lyon’s kneecaps and elbows. He jumps out of his vault but gets head-butted as he lands.
Flown back with the gun coming out of his hand, he quickly grabs for the aluminum baseball bat he had placed on the ground. Lyon tries to flee but his injured legs prevent him from getting away quick enough. Zaden repeated whacks him on the back of his head as Lyon falls and slowly becomes unconscious.
Knowing how quickly vampires heal and recover, Zaden uses heavy duty handcuffs to restrain Lyon’s hands behind his back. Then, he drags the monster to the stone table in the middle of the room and chains the vampire to it. Not wanting to take any other chances, Zaden brings out a syringe and injects the creature to keep him paralyzed. Then he waits.
About 15 minutes goes by before Lyon wakes.
“What are you doing?” Lyon growls, “Why haven’t you killed me?”
“It’s simple, really,” Zaden explains, “I want to ask you some questions”
“You must be this Zaden I keep hearing about. I’m on your side, but deserve whatever I get,” Lyon retracts, “I have nothing to hide. Let me tell you all about me. I was born a human child about 1200 years after the events of your Christ in the country of”
“I have no use of your life story!” screams Zaden, “Just answer my questions!”
“Very well,” responds Lyon
“First off, am I to believe you are over 800 years old?”
“I am!”
“And are you the oldest left?”
“As far as I know, I haven’t seen my sire in over 600 years, but I never heard of his passing,” explained Lyon.
“And in these 800 years, you have never sired another?”
“I sired the general for my army some 500 years ago, but never again. I let him sire the others needed initially. I never wanted to give up my power for others.”
With a puzzled look on his face Zaden asked, “so you become weaker when you share your blood with them?”
“Yes. Many of the younger ones don’t realize that because they aren’t that powerful to begin with. The more powerful your sire is when he makes you, the more powerful you are. Then you grow more and more powerful as you age.”
“Your fingers are beginning to twitch, I’m going to give you another injection,” Zaden stated as he grabs another syringe, “So are you the most powerful that you know of?”
“I’ve killed off all the others that could even come close. Unless my sire and others like him still exist in secret, there is no other even half as strong.”
“Your sire and others like him, what a tantalizing idea. But of no matter now, I need to finish what I’ve started. So it is this sharing of blood that sires a new vamp?” Zaden asked.
“Sharing is not quite right. We do drain the victim, and I do say victim because I wish it on no others, but that is to have enough strength when to lose our blood. It’s our blood that gives the results.”
“Really? That makes things to much easier.” Zaden replied.
“Easier, what? Oh my god, what is it you are planning?”
“You don’t need to worry about that,” Zaden offered, “you will be long dead before the consequences.”
Zaden pulls out his knife, “I’m going to tighten these chains around your legs to really hold you down so you can’t thrash around too much. Your fingers are twitching again. I believe I need to wait just a little bit longer until they are really moving.”
“No! No! You can’t do this! Do you have any idea what you are doing? You think this will make you stronger? Better? It’s a curse! You think you can just make yourself a vampire and then go on being yourself, make yourself stronger so that you are a better vampire hunter? It changes you!”
“DO YOU THINK I GIVE A DAMN ABOUT KILLING ANY OTHER VAMPIRES!” Zaden screamed, “I want to be like you. I have hunted your kind only for this purpose, to become immortal, and I damn well wanted to make sure that I was the most powerful monster around! Oh yes, get pissed off, it’s wearing off the drugs so much faster so that I don’t have to get any of that junk in my system.”
Zaden grabbed Lyon by the ankle and slashed right through the veins and arteries alike.
“NOOOO!!!! You don’t know what you are doing!” screamed Lyon.
“Oh, yes!” moaned Zaden as he began to suckle the flowing blood, “Give it to me, give it all to me.”
Zaden drank the magic blood in and kept drinking it. He let every drop of the precious elixir enter his mouth. He sucked and sucked until all that was left in front of him was the remains of a dried up old man.
He stood up and took a massive swing at the concrete wall. He easily crushed it. He went up to what remained of Lyon’s body and ripped off the head. Feeling so overjoyed; he left the mausoleum and took the head with him as a trophy.
He left the cemetery and found the first victim he could. An old beggar man, but it didn’t matter to Zaden. Blood is blood, and the thirst was intoxicating. Bleeding the old man dry, Zaden was overfilled with his own blood, Lyon’s, and the old mans.
“Now to start the real plans,” Zaden laughed to himself.
He found a pretty young prostitute who asked him if he wanted to have a good time.
He responded, “I sure as hell do. How would you like to rule the world with me?”
“Whatever. Let’s get this going, the clocks already ticking.”
He grabbed her and bent her head back. He could already smell the glorious blood just underneath her skin. He bit in and drank just a little ignoring her scream for help. He then slashed his wrist and put it to her mouth telling her to drink. He let her drink just enough to change her and pulled her off of his wrist.
“Now, go feed up and get strong. You are going to be my general and you have quite a few little monsters to make.”
Tim Morrell lives in Lawrence Kansas with
His lovely wife and two children
When not writing, Tim is a musician,
A painter, and works full time as a chef.
