Exsanguination Read online

  There were nods of agreement.

  “I want to tell you about the concessions I’ve gotten from the Police Commissioner.”

  When she’d finished going down the list, someone raised a hand and she acknowledged him.

  “Yes, Elliot?”

  “Some of us have heard that you’re implementing the best and brightest. Is it true?”

  Vanessa smiled and shook her head. “There’s just no keeping a secret these days. Yes, it’s true.”

  To see the faces in the crowd, one might have thought that she’d announced free virgin blood on tap for the night. An hour later the meeting broke up and the non-residents left the house.

  As the five sat in the drawing room, sipping wine, Phillip was the first to speak up.

  “Well?” he looked at Vanessa.

  “Hmm?” she gave him a questioning look.

  “What’s this best and brightest business? You not really going to leave us in the dark, are you?”

  “It’s a program I developed about fifty years ago. Over the last half-century, the best and brightest humans have been identified and catalogued. Geniuses in their respective fields and, more recently, we’ve been tracking people in positions of power.”

  “And?” Phillip looked at her, frustrated that she’d stopped at that point.

  Her gaze was steady. “They will be offered immortality. Those who wish to have it will be turned. There will be a great shift in society from being a human-centric one to vampire-centric one.”

  He stared at her in disbelief. “Well, don’t vampires . . . like Antoine and such get to vote on this?”

  Vanessa refilled her glass. “Let me explain vampire hierarchy to you, darling. A vampire who does stupid and or foolish things generally meets an early end. One who makes it to a few hundred years is generally considered to have accumulated significant wisdom, learned to exercise good judgement, and employed caution in making decisions. Younger or newly turned vampires will defer to him or her.”

  Phillip held up his hand. “One quick question.”

  Her eyebrows went up. “Hmm?”

  “Is anyone older than you?”

  She slowly shook her head. “No.”

  “Not in all of Britain?”

  “No one in the world. I am the oldest of our kind in existence.”

  He was experiencing no small degree of mental shock. “So, at your word, this takes place on a global scale?”

  “Worldwide, my judgement is revered by all of my kind. There will be no questioning.”

  He sat back, downing the remainder of the wine in his glass and stared at the fire. She dropped into the love seat next to him.

  “Oh, Phillip,” she chuckled, “surely you didn’t think I was some minor foot soldier,” she patted his thigh and smiled at him.

  He shook his head. “No, but I never imagined anything on this sort of scale. What if someone wants to turn down the offer of immortality? What then?”

  “Absolutely no one will be forced during this process. They . . . the humans in question . . . will have complete free will in the matter.”

  “Well, that’s good at least,” he looked from the fire to her eyes. “It’s going to take a while for me to digest this whole thing.”

  “I know,” she smiled at him sympathetically.

  XX

  Late, the following afternoon, the five were eating in the dining room and Vanessa spoke.

  “I think it’s highly likely that we’re going to be targeted. We’ve killed a couple of theirs and the one that got away doubtless had a good look at me. With the video available of the interview Phillip and I did on the tele, they’ll know exactly where to look if they want revenge.”

  Joe nodded. “Want to keep weapons at hand?”

  “I think it would be advisable. Nikki is good but I think you, Phillip, and Owen should get some practice in on the M4 using conventional ammunition. Don’t waste silver.”

  Finishing their meal, they went downstairs to the vault and Vanessa began giving instruction on handling the M4 carbine, taking single shots once they fully understood its operation. Satisfied, she had the magazines refilled with silver bullets.

  “All of you go ahead up; I’ll be there in a few minutes.”

  Everyone was in the drawing room, weapons near their sides when Vanessa walked in. She had changed her clothing, now wearing tight, black leather hip huggers and a matching crop top. Neither cold nor heat had much of an effect on her, Nikki, or Joe. Phillip looked at her appreciatively. She carried a long, slender package under her arm. It was wrapped in cloth.

  Phillip frowned. “Where’s your gun?”

  “No firearms for me, darling,” she smiled as she unwrapped two Katanas and drew one from its sheath. It gleamed brightly in the light of the chandelier.

  “Whoa,” Owen whispered.

  Vanessa looked at Phillip. “Guns can run out of bullets. I told you I spent some length of time in the Far East, didn’t I?” she drew the second blade and began engaging in complex acrobatics, moving so quickly that she was often no more than a blur. The two swords sliced through the air with such speed that they could be detected only by the occasional reflection of the light from the chandelier glinting off the blades. After soaring ten feet in the air, she finally came down in a bowed, squatting position, blades extended either side of her.

  Joe whistled and slowly shook his head. “Eat your heart out, Kill Bill.”

  She stood up and Owen spoke. “Like you really need us?”

  Vanessa shrugged and re-sheathed the blades. “It’s called wushu and, when combined with vampiric speed and strength, the result is lethal. We don’t know how many we’ll be up against when the time comes. All of us need to be ready.”

  Nikki’s eyes narrowed and she held out her hands for silence. “We need to go outside the gates. There’s something out there.”

  “Lycans?” Phillip asked.

  She frowned and shook her head. “It sounds mechanical.”

  Vanessa strapped on the harness that held her katanas on her back, a hilt above either side of her head.

  Armed, they walked the half mile to the gates and over the rise that existed just past the road. Looking down, they saw several police cars with armed men stationed around them. Vanessa moved quickly ahead of the other four. The police spotted her and she yelled at them.

  “What the hell are you doing out here”

  Recognizing her, the ranking officer approached. “Sorry mum, we’re under orders to surveil the area.”

  “Your damned orders are going to get you killed if the lycans show up here. They’ll make mincemeat out of you!”

  One of the constables elbowed the man next to him and he frowned. “They have better weapons than we do!” he stated quietly.

  “Does DCI Fuller know that you’re out here?”

  “I don’t know, mum.”

  “Well, who the hell ordered you out here?”

  “It was a memo from the Commissioner, mum.”

  She shook her head and sighed. “If the lycans come, you’ll all be dead within minutes. Your guns will do nothing to even slow them down. You’ll be torn limb from limb.”

  The man began to shake and Nikki stepped forward.

  “She’s not kidding, pal. Ever see a man gutted alive? That’s what’s in store for you. Now get the hell out of here!”

  “We can’t. We’re under orders!” he responded.

  Vanessa gave him a critical look. “Stupid, stupid fools.”

  They turned and re-entered the gates and Vanessa looked at Phillip. “On the bright side, we’ll hear gunfire before we smell the lycans.” Looking at Nikki, she shook her head. “Stupid humans.”

  Two hours later, in the drawing room, they did, in fact, hear gunfire and their sensitive ears could pick up the screams of men dying.

  “Let’s go,” Vanessa ordered sharply and they headed for the front doors at a run.

  “Phillip! You and Owen shoot from the windows! Stay inside!” V
anessa ordered.

  As she and Nikki went through the doors, they saw a wave of lycans flooding through the gates, snarling and roaring.

  “We stand here. Don’t let them get behind us,” Vanessa shouted.

  Phillip looked at the oncoming horde. There must have been thirty or more of them! He, Owen, and Joe broke out windows. On orders from Vanessa, Joe had remained in the house to fire from there. When the lycans were about a hundred feet out, they opened fire. Nikki began going through magazines at a high rate of speed. At the same time, Vanessa leapt into the air and brought the twin blades of silver coated steel into play. Moving faster than the eye could see, she took off limbs and heads with clean slices. It was like watching a harvesting machine cutting down wheat. The whole battle didn’t last longer than about two minutes. Vanessa stood on a pile of bodies, totally drenched in blood. She could see that Nikki was apparently unharmed. She looked at the rest of her team, glancing behind her at the front of the house.

  “Is everyone alright?” she wiped her swords down and replaced them in their sheaths.

  They were all a bit shaken and trying to recover from the mayhem but they nodded. “We’re good!” Vanessa jumped down lightly from the bodies.

  “Well, let’s see if anything can be done for those policemen out there.”

  The three in the house joined them and, as they exited the gate and looked down from the rise, all that could be seen were eviscerated bodies and overturned cars. They walked down the slope to the scene. Looking for survivors, they found none. Everyone was dead.

  Nikki moaned softly. “Oh, no!”

  Owen rushed to her side. “What is it?”

  She pointed to a young man, lying on his back, his throat torn out. “After we gave that talk to Fuller’s men, this fellow asked me out for coffee. It’s so sad, Owen.”

  Vanessa was on her mobile, contacting Detective Fuller.

  “You need to send a team out to my home, Detective. You’ve got roughly fifteen dead policemen out here. We’ll wait for you at the scene.”

  It took only twenty minutes for the police cars to arrive, led by detective Fuller’s unmarked car. Fuller was heartbroken at the carnage. He knew many of the dead men.

  Vanessa related the conversation she had with the head policeman.

  “That son of a bitch!” he yelled, referring to the Commissioner.

  “Wasn’t he informed?”

  “I told him of the hazards of interference – that conventional weapons would be useless but apparently he didn’t believe me. He gestured around him. “Now this is the result.”

  “If your people will look the other way, I’ll take his head for you.”

  He looked at her and realized she was completely serious. Shaking his head, he responded. “Please don’t. There would be hell to pay.”

  “As you wish,” she nodded.

  “No lycans here?”

  “They slaughtered your men and then flooded through the opening toward my home,” she began walking up the rise with Fuller following.

  “So my men didn’t take one of them down?”

  “No, they never had a chance against them,” she shook her head.

  As they passed through the gates, he could see the bodies and body parts strewn all over the grass in piles here and there.

  “Holy mother of God! It looks like a battlefield from the great war!”

  “What’s your name, detective?” she cocked her head inquiringly. “I’m tired of calling you by your title.”

  “Jack,” he said as he continued to look around the area.

  “Well, Jack, it looks like a battlefield because that’s exactly what it is. There’s a war and I’m trying to keep humans out of it,” she looked over her shoulder at the gates. “Sadly, I’ve not been completely successful. Hopefully, those results will give your Commissioner pause.”

  “I hope so,” he sighed and then looked confused. There appeared to be humans interspersed with lycans.

  Vanessa saw his confusion. “When you kill a lycan, it reverts to its human form. It can take a bit but, ultimately, all of these will go back to their original form. Tell your coroner to help himself to all that he might want. Otherwise, we’ll burn them.”

  He nodded. “What kind of world am I living in?”

  “The real world, Jack.”

  “Do you think that’s the last of them?”

  Vanessa shook her head. “I doubt it very much. There may be another hundred . . . or they may number in the thousands. It’s difficult to say for sure. I don’t think it will be long before they figure out that a full frontal assault is not the way to go.”

  “Jesus Christ!”

  One of the lycans whimpered in pain and Vanessa bent down to examine him. “He’s taken a bullet or two but not enough to kill him. Would someone on your side be interested in taking him in for examination?”

  “I’m sure,” he nodded quickly and took out his mobile. A few minutes later, he looked at Vanessa. “Some people are on their way to get him.”

  “Tell them to have a care as he may resist handling. They’ll have to chain him up securely.”

  “I’ll be sure to do that.”

  “Can you get a message to your Commissioner that I’d like to meet with him?”

  Jack nodded. “I don’t know how he’ll respond but I can try.”

  A cab pulled up near the edge of the crime scene tape and two people got out. They started yelling and the woman was screaming hysterically. Vanessa and Jack returned to the gate. Vanessa sighed.

  “Jack, those two people out there, can you have them led through to the house, please?”

  The detective frowned. “Who are they?”

  She took a deep breath and looked at him. “Would you believe it? Phillip’s parents. People with the worst timing in the world.”

  Mildred was slumped against her husband as the two were led carefully around the bodies and in through the gates. Nikki spotted them and skipped nimbly over the bodies to reach them.

  “Oh! Thank God!” Mildred grabbed her daughter and then pulled back. “Phillip? Where’s Phillip?”

  “He’s fine,” she looked over her shoulder. “He’s coming now.”

  Mildred saw him. “Both of you are leaving right now! You’re getting out of here immediately!”

  Vanessa spoke. “Phillip, Nikki, why don’t you take your parents inside, away from this carnage? I’m going to supervise this,” she gestured toward the still-living lycan.

  As they walked through the doors, Mildred’s legs buckled and she collapsed. Before she could reach the floor, Nikki scooped her up and took her to a sofa in the drawing room. Phillip poured a glass of scotch for his father and handed it to him.

  “What the hell happened out there, Phillip? I’ve never seen anything like it!”

  “We were attacked by lycans, dad. Fortunately, all of us are fine.”

  “Lycans?” his face twisted in confusion.

  “Werewolves, dad.”

  “This is a lot to take in. What’s all this nonsense about your sister being a vampire? That’s crazy talk!”

  “She is, dad,” he nodded.

  “I don’t believe it.”

  Phillip sighed as Mildred came to and screamed. He went to her, helped her up and over to the area at the fireplace. Owen and Joe were off to the side, reloading magazines.

  He got both his parents seated. “It’s a bit of a long story but here it is.”

  As he was wrapping up the tale, Vanessa entered and approached them. She was still covered in blood.

  “They’ve got the unchanged lycan chained down to a flatbed and are carting him off. Jack says the rest of the bodies will take an hour or so as they need to bring in a truck for them.”

  Mildred jumped to her feet to face her and stuck her finger in Vanessa’s face. “You!” she screamed. “You’ve turned my children into monsters!” she began pounding her fists on Vanessa’s chest who wrapped her arms around the hysterical woman.

  “
There, there, it’s going to be fine.”

  Phillip was sure he’d never seen Vanessa look so uncomfortable. She wiggled a finger at him in an obvious effort to get him to take over. He took his mother from her arms and hugged her as he gave Vanessa a helpless look.

  “Mildred, look at me.”

  The woman turned and looked into Vanessa’s eyes.

  “Everything is fine. Phillip and Nikki are both fine, safe, and quite happy with themselves. You’ve no need to worry about anything. You’re going to become calm.”

  Mildred’s breathing slowed and she appeared to relax.

  Vanessa looked down at herself and then at the group. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to get cleaned up.”

  Upstairs, Vanessa watched as the water in the shower turned a light red while running off her body. The intrusion of Phillip’s parents was an annoyance and they could get in the way, she thought. Both Phillip and Nikki seemed to have been completely distraught at the sight of the police massacre. She couldn’t remember when her attitudes about humans had changed so it was difficult to gauge when Nikki’s might. Long ago, she’d reached a point where she viewed humans as cattle some of the time, especially when they irritated her. She didn’t hate them but she saw them as a food source and little more. Vanessa shook her head as if to clear her mind as she replaced her outfit.

  She entered the drawing room to see Phillip and Nikki talking with their parents. Mildred gave her a dirty look as she approached.

  Vanessa poured herself a drink and looked at them. “You’re very lucky, you know. Had you arrived an hour earlier you’d likely be dead,” she stated flatly.

  “We tried again and again to reach both Phillip and Nikki on their cell phones but couldn’t get any response,” Mildred looked reproachfully at her children.

  Vanessa sighed. “You should have had the presence of mind to contact either one of them by email.”

  Mildred turned her attention back to her children, ignoring Vanessa’s reproach.

  “You have to come home.”

  Phillip sighed. “Mom, we are home. This is our home.”