Author's Note: This story takes place a few years before the events depicted in the first "Hunted Blood" story.
It would have been just another day in Seattle. It was raining, though not heavily. The streets had that oily film that comes with the first light shower of the day. The sidewalks were equally slick, and in this part of town, equally grimy. And this meant it would have been just another day, even with the corpse lying across the sidewalk near the alleyway entrance. However, there was something unusual about this particular corpse. But it was similar to ones from before.
This was the third one. The third female victim found in the early morning on a street known for its over-abundance of females. In this part of town, murders were not unusual at all. Drug deals gone bad, or drug deals gone well, either way, someone sometimes died as a result. It was the way of the streets. For this part of town, it was accepted. But, not this one. Not the third, or the second, or even the first.
There was a crowd gathered, as there always was at a crime scene of this type. They were curious onlookers hoping to get a glimpse of death. Yellow crime scene tape had been tied to a few light posts and secured to a fire-hydrant, making a triangular shaped area guarded by uniformed patrol officers. A police dog, secure and dry inside a patrol car, barked while his handler stood silently near.
The crime scene technicians were knelt down beside the body. Two plainclothes investigators and another uniformed officer stood near them, all within the boundaries of the tape.
One of the investigators, Melissa Cove, stared hard at the third victim. She had been the lead investigator on the previous two. Both of those had turned up absolutely nothing, beyond a very puzzling crime lab report. And this one looked the same. Female, young, very early-twenties. Definitely a street-walker. Hooker. Whore. Whatever. Drug user. Crack head. Whatever. This one had the same tearing to her neck, over her jugular vein, just like the ones before. Melissa even thought she could see what might have been the blood vessel itself inside the ragged hole through the dead girl's flesh. She fought back the rising bile and looked around the body.
There was no blood. None. She and the other officers had already searched the alleyway. There was no blood there, either. None.
Just like the first two.
Which led Melissa to the logical conclusion: the girl, whore, hooker, whatever, had been killed somewhere else. Or, and this was the one that Melissa didn't want to think about, the killer had drank the victim's blood. Like a vampire.
That was just plain crazy. Even though the lab report from the first two said there was some type of saliva in the wounds. The lab report couldn't define the type of saliva, but stated it was human-like, or had human characteristics, or some such shit.
She watched the guys from the medical examiner's office stuff the corpse into a black body bag. She and the crime scene techs exchanged a few words, and then she went to her car.
The rain coat Melissa wore did little to save her dark brown hair from getting wet. She had pulled it back into a tail, as was customary when she was working. It didn't matter now, she thought, because she was soaked to the skin thanks to the early morning drizzle.
This was number three. They were obviously all killed by the same person. Some sick, twisted sociopath was out there preying on the girls who worked these streets. Some of the police officers didn't think that was such a bad thing. She could understand that kind of attitude, but whatever the case; there was a serial killer on the loose. A killer the newspapers and TV had already labeled "The Vampire Killer".
If they only knew how correct their identification had been.
- - -
It took almost six rings for Michael Stone to answer his cellular phone. He had to change the fishing rod he held to his left hand and dig in his shorts' pocket with his right. He put it to his ear and heard a familiar voice.
"Michael Ivanovich," the voice stated. Stone smiled. The voice belonged to Yuri Pavelovich, a contact for The Organization. The Organization was a secret directive of vampire hunters, funded by many world governments. Their mission was not only to destroy vampires, but to also study and maintain intelligence on them. In other words, they hunted down and killed the ones who threatened humankind, and watched carefully the ones who didn't.
"Yuri," Michael said into the phone. "I'm not catching a damn thing."
"Have you seen the news?" Yuri stated, not bothering to acknowledge Michael's comment about his fishing trip in Florida.
"News?" Michael asked. "Yuri, I'm on vacation. I don't watch the news."
Yuri made a sigh. "Too bad, vanya. Your vacation is going to be cut short. I've emailed you a brief. Read it and comply."
Michael's voice took a serious tone when he replied. "Will do," he said.
Michael ended the call and began to reel his line in. This was going to be a good week, he thought. He had even met a rather nice looking young lady that was staying two doors down from him at his hotel in St. Augustine. And at this point, he knew he would never get to ask her name.
- - -
It had taken a little while for the chartered fishing boat to make its way back to the marina. Michael snatched up his gear, but he had no fish to take with him. Back in his hotel room, Michael plugged in his laptop. When the computer booted, he accessed his email and waited for the encryption algorithms to run. Once the email program had downloaded his message, he read it.
The brief was detailed with newspaper articles and some television video feeds about Seattle's "Vampire Killer". The newspaper headlines caught his attention, as it had no doubt done the same when read by one of The Organization's analysts. The word "vampire", along with several others, was a key word that ran through The Organization's servers. The servers collected information from various news agencies, and if any of the key words came up, these articles and stories were flagged for review. It was one of the many ways the secret society of vampire hunters kept track of their quarry.
Michael read further. He learned he would be using his FBI cover, with an assignment to the Seattle field office. The Seattle Police Department's criminal investigation division had requested a profile to be done on the Vampire Killer. Stone would provide them with just that. He learned his point of contact was an investigator named Melissa Cove. Further details told him his identification and other necessary items would be waiting for him in a hotel room in Seattle.
The Organization was tied into just about every major government in the world. In most cases, these governments had contacts with The Organization at the executive level. This included national law enforcement agencies such as the FBI in the United States and MI5 in the United Kingdom. As a result of this Michael Stone had official status in several different agencies. His training, however, surpassed anything modern law enforcement could provide.
Michael sighed. He wasn't quite ready to leave sunny Florida for rainy Washington. He had no choice, however. His quarter-million dollar yearly salary meant he had to go to work.
He drove his rented car back to the airport in Jacksonville, Florida. He found his plane ticket waiting for him at the Delta counter, and soon he was in the air once again, heading west.
- - -
Michael Stone settled into his hotel room. He unpacked his luggage, and retrieved a briefcase from the closet. Inside was his official FBI identification, as well as the issue FBI sidearm, a Springfield .45 that was designed and built for the FBI Hostage Rescue Team. Not too many agents were issued them as side arms. Stone hoped no one asked too many questions about his choice of carry weapon. The .45 round was necessary, though. It was the preferred ammunition choice for hunters, as The Organization had designed special hyper-fragmentation rounds that were almost explosive in nature. They were the perfect bullets to kill vampires.
Stone power napped for half an hour, then dressed in a navy blue business suit and left the hotel. He took his rented car to the medical examiner's office. His ID let him through to the morgue, where he asked to see the body of the latest victim.
It was as he had read in his brief, but seeing it was much worse. Michael noted with his trained eyes the distinctive tearing of flesh over the jugular vein. The bruising around the site told Michael the vampire had sucked hard, draining the young girl of blood. Michael donned a pair of latex gloves and opened the corpse's eyes. The eyes were glazed over, the pupils fixed and cloudy, the way they should be. This told him the young girl was truly dead, and had not been fed blood from the monster that killed her. She was dead, and would stay that way.
"Toxicology report?" Michael asked the Medical Examiner.
"Evidence of metabolized cocaine," the ME replied. "Typical for where she was found."
"What about the wound? Anything at all?"
The ME got a perplexed look on his face. He shook his head. "Something," he answered, "that I'm not sure about. There was saliva present in the wound. But the DNA doesn't match anything. And I mean it doesn't match anything human. It's almost the same, but there are proteins I've never seen before. Amino acid strands that just do not come from people. It's like they are alien or something." He looked at Michael as if he expected Stone not to believe him.
Michael nodded his head. "Thank you, Doctor," he said. Stone pretended to look the body over once more, as if he was studying for post-mortem details about how she was killed. Actually he had learned all the needed. She was killed by a vampire, and she would not become a vampire herself. He turned to leave, and as he walked out the door into the hallway, he literally bumped into Investigator Melissa Cove.
"Pardon me," Stone said. Melissa stepped back and gave him an accusing look.
"Who are you?" she asked.
Michael retrieved his ID from his inside coat pocket. He opened the leather folder and showed her. "Michael Stone," he said. "I believe you asked for me?"
Melissa sighed. "You're the profiler?"
Stone nodded. She was shorter than he was, but tall enough that he wouldn't have to bend too far to kiss her. He watched her mouth when she talked. She was very pretty, beautiful even, but Stone sensed a hard edge to her. Well, she was a cop, after all.
"What were you doing in the ME's office?"
"Formulating a profile," he said. "Looking at evidence. Cop stuff."
She was clearly exasperated. "And do you have a theory yet, or are you just as lost as the rest of us?"
