Her Twilight Years; Tales of a Granny Vampire. Part 3, "Friends and Enemies"

 
 

          “Back already?  Are you sure you plugged all the leaks?”

            “Yes, I spoke with Sergeant Dawkins myself, he was the first to arrive on the scene. He suspected paranormal activity immediately, quarantined the area and confiscated the security tapes. The copy you’ve been watching is the only one left.”

            “What about the witnesses.”

            “Taken care of.”

            “Memory spell?”

            “Yes, by one of our top mystics.”

            “Zula?”

            “No, Zula couldn’t come, we sent Astron.”

            “Zula would have been better.”

            “Yes sir.”

            “What about the other cops?”

            “Astron got them all.  Dawkins is the only one outside of the Bureau of Paranormal Investigation who has any knowledge of the incident.”

            Commissioner Walters nodded, put his pen down on his desk and leaned back in his chair.

            “Have a seat Parker,” he said, as he hit rewind on the old VCR.

            Parker pulled a chair around the desk, so he could see the T.V. better and sat down next to Walters. 

            Walters looked over at his Parker.  He was so young just a kid really.  He’d been with the bureau for almost six months but he was still green. Walters still resented being assigned such a young partner.  The kid had no experience, he’d only been a cop for four years, but the bosses insisted.  They hadn’t told Walters the whole story but there was something in Parker’s past that qualified him for service into the Bureau.  Probably some tragic encounter with the supernatural, vampires got his parents or something like that.  Parker never talked about it and Walters never asked. In his twenty-five years with the Bureau he’d heard enough horror stories, he didn’t need to know the details of Parker’s.

                   He hit play, the monitor flashed white for a second, then the bank scene appeared.

            “There are robbers,” Walters narrated, “the guy at the front of the line, the one next to the guard and the one by the door.”

            “They are human?”

            “They are the victims.”

            Walters hit fast forward, the man went to the teller and took out his gun, the second man moved in to cover the guard.

            “There,” Walters said, hitting pause, “see he turns there, something behind him drew his attention.”

            “But none of the hostages moved.”

            “You gotta follow his line of sight. Ghouls don’t show up on tape.”

            “He’s looking toward the back of the line.  You mean there’s something there?”

            “Just watch.”

            He hit play.  The man covering the door moved forward and spoke to the air at the end of the line. Then suddenly drew his gun then began struggling.  The gun flashed and he stepped back. 

            “Poltergeist?” Parker asked.

            Walters grunted, “maybe, but keep watching.”

            The shot had upset the other two.  The man at the teller started shoving money into his pockets.  The one who fired the shot took off out the door. The other two moved to follow but, as the man with the money passed the end of the line, he fell, tripped over something. 

            As the rest of the video played Walters watch Parker’s eyes grow wide and his face grow pale.  The kid was still too green.

            “It went for their necks,” Parker said when the tape snapped to an end. “a Vampire.”

            “Probably, but this was in broad daylight, Vamps tend to be more discrete, it could be a poltergeist tearing out their necks to throw us off course.”

            “Maybe a malevolent spirit, someone who was killed in a robbery and is taking his revenge post mortem.”

            “It’s possible but I’m still leaning toward Vampire.  The guy who fired the shot thought he was firing at someone.”

            “But people often shoot at ghosts and why would a Vampire be killing bank robbers?”

            “I’ve seen it before.  Some Vampire thinks that just because he’s a demon doesn’t mean he’s gotta be all bad and takes to killing criminals.”

            “Like some kind of super hero,”

            “Yeah but remember that the Vamp still has to feed.  Whoever it is isn’t going to wait for due process.  We’re talking about a crusader, monster on a righteous mission.  Have you any idea how bloody the crusades were.”

            Parker nodded slowly, “it’s a pity if a Vampire really could be turned, if we had one on our side…”

            “It’s impossible,” Walters interrupted, “a demon is a demon.”

            “Okay.  So what do we do now?”

            “What descriptions did we get before Astro wiped their memories?”

            “Nothing solid.  A female maybe, the witnesses were freaking out.  Two said the robbers just started sooting.  On said they were killed by an old lady.”

            “People have trouble processing this stuff, I don’t think we can trust the eye witness accounts. Go downstairs, pull up everything that could be linked to vampire activity in the area and put out an APB on the third bank robber, the one that got away. My guess is that our ghoul will be hunting him.  We’ve got to get to him first.”

            “Right.”

            Walters watched Parker go, then stood up and walked toward the monitor. 

            “A crusader,” he said into the monitor, “I’m getting to old for this.”

           

            Margery sat in her living room with her grandson and his girlfriend.  They were sipping glasses of fresh blood and laughing.  Margery smiled over at Lilly.  At first she hadn’t like Billy’s girlfriend, she was a banshee after all and had piercing all over her face, but Margery had recently began to embrace her own demonic nature and, as she did, she began to enjoy the company of other monsters.  She played bridge twice a week with a couple of hags from the witch’s coven and Bloody Mary, from the graveyard, had introduced her to some fascinating ghosts.  One of them, shrieking Tom, had known her father during the war.  Best of all, since she had begun acting more like a vampire, Billy had been lest embarrassed by her. Yes, if Lilly made her grandson happy then she could get used to the piercings and the shrieking and the floating around the room. Margery still didn’t care for her Zombie friends but she tried to be pleasant and keep some brains in the fridge for them

            For the past three weeks, since incident at the bank, Lilly came by nearly every day and gone hunting with them twice.  They’d taken out that mugger and that man who lived near the park.  Everyone knew he murdered he wife several years back but the cops had never been able to pin in on him.  Well, he’d finally got his comeuppance, thanks to Grany Vamp and her righteous grandson.

            “So what’s our next plan?” Billy asked.

            “Well,” Margery said setting down her glass, “the girls from the coven say their seer has predicted a string of muggings in the city, a couple of women...street walkers…have turned up dead.”

            “Great so we should start there,” Lilly said, “I’ll talk to some of the sectors I know from the city see if they’ve seen anything and I can start haunting some alleyways tomorrow night.”

            “That would be great dear,” Margery smiled at Lilly again, “and you know I’ve been looking at patterns, if your still not against it, I really could sew us some outfits, I mean if we’re going to be evil fighting evil we should dress the part.”

            “Grandma,” Billy sighed.
            “Besides you always wear your nice sweaters and the bloodstains are terrible, if you had something in a washable polyester…”

            “Grandma,” Billy cut her off but after a pause added, “if it means that much to you I guess we could look into it.”

            “Great!”

            “But nothing fancy.”

            “Oh and you’ll have to get the coven to enchant anything you make for me,”  Lilly added, “otherwise I won’t be able to pass through walls with it on.”

            “Of course dear.”

            They went on talking and drinking for another half an hour.  Then Margery excused herself.  The sun was coming up and she really did need to get some sleep but if Lilly wanted to stay a little longer that was fine as long as they kept the volume on the T.V. down.

            “Thanks Grandma,” Billy said as she went to her room.

           

            From the window two green eyes also watched her go. The charchol black cat, sitting in the windowsill, had been watching them for some time.  When the old woman was gone to her room the cat jumped down, slunk across the yard and disappeared into a storm drain.  Like a shadow it slipped through the endless maze of tunnels until it came out into a large cavernous chamber, a crypt directly beneath the cemetery. 

            The enormous room was dimply lit by a hundred melting candles.  An old crone sat in a high backed silver chair gazing off into nothingness.  A dark figure, dressed in a long cape and top hat, paced back and forth across the wet floor.  The cat dropped down and slipped over to the old woman’s chair.

            “Back so soon,” the woman creaked as the cat jumped into her lap, “we’ll tell me what you saw.”

            The dark figure stopped pacing, “we’ll what is it? Did she find her?”

            “Yes,” the old woman said stroking the cat’s dark fur, “she found her.  The one we’re looking for. You were right they’re planning to take down some human criminals in the city.”

            The figure turned away from the old woman.  Then it was true, they had another righteous vampire on their hands.  Why couldn’t they just feed discretely, embrace their nature, hero types like these invariably brought down the hunters.  That d*@# Bureau was probably on their scent already.  Why couldn’t these stupid vampire’s see that their flashy “heroics” were bad for all ghouls.

            “Call the boys,” the figure ordered without turning back to the chair, “we’ll put a stop to this before it gets out of hand.”

            The old woman smiled and the cat in her lap purred deeply.