Page 9 of Silent Stalker
THREE
I will stake you so hard your ash ends up in China.
Aware I would be huntingmiscreants, I skipped on my favorite dessert at the end of the night. After a brief but intense dispute, I convinced Emerick he needed his evening snack, as I hunted best when a little thirsty.
By the time he dropped me off, I’d progressed from thirsty to ravenous.
My hunting grounds, on the western shore of Manhattan, made an excellent place for somebody to get up to no good. With Harlem and West Harlem a hop, skip, and a jump away, those who could afford to move had, those who could afford the investment bought what they could, and few braved the stretch of shore including Riverbank State Park and Riverside Park.
It made for the perfect place to dump bodies. In time, the situation would change. My father’s activities in Harlem would see to that. As soon as the first affluent people moved in, the dominos would begin to fall. The affluent would clean up their neighborhood and the nearby areas for their enjoyment, displacing those lurking in the darker alleys of the area. Even in the short time since rising from my grave, change had already begun. The construction work made certain the smart miscreants abandoned the area, moving on to new hunting grounds filled with unsuspecting people.
When I returned home, I needed to ask Emerick when the shore had gone to hell. Within twenty minutes of him heading off in his Civic, I came across my first meal of the night. The three vampires reminded me a lot of myself before having been staked and dragged back to Emerick’s lair and somewhat tamed. Unlike me, the bastards hunted idiot teens who should have known better than to venture out late at night to a secluded area.
Nobody had heard them scream, not even me.
The vampires must have gone for the kill as a uniformed front. The kids still struggled, which boded well for them having a future. The three-on-one odds annoyed me, however.
I preferred singling out my prey.
Oh, well.
Thanks to the teens doing their best to stick together, I would be able to eliminate two of the three vampires in a single hit, leaving me with a sole miscreant I needed to dispatch before he had a chance to kill either kid.
I already regretted my decision to hunt alone. With Emerick, we could have partnered and eliminated all three, giving the teens the best odds for survival. Swallowing so I wouldn’t hiss, I eased two of my stakes from their sheaths. The one not actively trying to dig his teeth into their victims would get the beauty of a stake I’d used to kill Carnegie.
In my eyes, standing by and watching the murder of children earned him a swift death, but I would stake to incapacitate. I would have preferred a brutal, agonizing death for the terror he helped inflict on their prey. Instead, I would sacrifice the agony and the death for the heightened chance of saving them along with preserving the chance to learn what the hell was going on. Since when did miscreants hunt in packs?
Worse, the miscreants hunted in a maddened frenzy, as far as I could tell.
I selected the toothpick’s longer sibling, as I hoped the kids would have a chance to see the sun again sometime soon, once they recovered.
Aware of Emerick’s request to keep my targets alive, I decided I would aim for their shoulders. In time, assuming they had a damned good defense for their actions, they would live—if the stakes opted to allow them to survive.
I’d find out soon enough.
I crossed the unkempt lawn in three jumps and hit the observing vampire and one of the feeding ones, driving the stakes into their flesh. One managed a pained yelp before paralysis kicked in. They toppled, and I released my weapons, jerking a new stake free, twisting, and plowing into the third, pulling him off his meal, a girl who couldn’t have been older than thirteen. His choice to bite her shoulder likely saved her life.
Had he bitten her neck or wrist, she would have already died.
We rolled, and the battle began in earnest. My time with Emerick had resolved some of my physical weakness, but I’d underestimated the strength of a desperate vampire.
The first smack to the face would earn me at least two weeks of day dancing sessions, especially as the bastard’s palm cracked into my nose. The flash of pain earned him a hiss. The shock of pain immobilized me long enough for the bastard to land a second hit against my shoulder.
My fury flared brighter.
If the miscreant thought it was fine to go for my face, I’d drive my knee so hard into his crotch his testicles would pop out of his ears. I pulled back long enough to get my feet under me, ready to implement my plan while baring my fangs, ignoring the blood dripping from my nose. Clutching my stake in my left hand, I freed my right in case my plan to rearrange him from the crotch up failed to produce results.
Before I could strike, a dark shadow sped across the yard, catching my attention in the moonlight.
My opponent scrambled back, throwing himself prone in a groveling position, stretching out his hands and spreading his fingers in his effort to appease the approaching figure.
What the hell?
The shadows condensed into a solid form. A massive black feline prowled closer, ears turned back and issuing a long and low hiss.
Since when did New York have panthers? In a world with werecobras, a panther seemed almost normal, although I’d never seen any people who could become cats before. Assuming I survived, I would make a point of learning about the other denizens of the night I might run into.
I eased in the direction of the groaning teenagers, pulling out a second stake to make a stand against the furry predator if needed.
