13 Bullets.

By David Wellington.

Part I - Lares.

Though far and near the bullets hiss/ I've scaped a bloodier hour than this.

-George Gordon, Lord Byron, The Giaour.

Incident Report filed by Special Deputy Jameson Arkeley, 10/4/83 (recorded on reel to reel audio tape):.

Through the rain there wasn't much to see. The all-night diner stood at the corner of two major streets. Its plate gla.s.s windows spilled a little light on the pavement. I handed the binoculars to Webster, my local liaison. "Do you see him?" I asked.

The subject in question, one Piter Byron Lares (probably an alias), sat at the diner's counter, hunched over in deep conversation with a middle-aged waitress. He would be a big man if he stood up but leaning over like that he didn't look so imposing. His face was very pale and his black hair stood up in a wild shock of frizzy curls. An enormous red sweater hung off him-another attempt at camouflaging his size, I figured. He wore thick eyegla.s.ses with tortoise-sh.e.l.l rims.

"I don't know what they teach you at Fed school, Arkeley, but I've never heard of one them needing gla.s.ses," Webster said, handing me back the binoculars.

"Shut up." The week before I had found six dead girls in a cellar in Liverpool, West Virginia. They'd been having a slumber party. They were in so many pieces it took three lab technicians working night and day in a borrowed school gymnasium just to decide how many bodies we had. I was not in a good mood. I had beaten one of the a.s.shole's minions to dust with my bare hands just to find out his alias. I wasn't going to slow down now.

Lares stood up, his head still bowed, and took a leather wallet out of his pocket. He began to count out small bills. Then he seemed to think of something. He looked up, around the diner. He rose to his full height and looked out at the street.

"Did he just make us?" Webster demanded. "In this weather?" "I'm not sure," I said. About a gallon of bright red blood erupted across the diner's front window. I couldn't see anything inside. "s.h.i.t!" I screamed, and pushed my way out of the car, across the sidewalk, the rain soaking me instantly. I burst inside the diner, my star bright on my jacket, but he was already gone and there was n.o.body left alive inside to be impressed. The waitress lay on the floor, her head nearly torn off her body. You read about them and you expect vampire wounds to be dainty little things, maybe a pair of bad hickeys. Lares had chewed most of the woman's neck off. Her jugular vein stuck out like the neck of a deflated balloon.

No. More like a straw.

Blood spilled off the counter, blood had splattered the ceiling. I unholstered my service revolver and stepped around the body. There was a door in the back. I had to stop myself from racing back there. If he was in the back and I ran into him in the shadows by the men's room I wouldn't survive my curiosity. I headed back out into the rain where Webster already had the car running. He'd

been busy rousing the locals. A helicopter swooped low over our heads with a racket that was sure to get complaints tomorrow morning. The chopper's spotlight blasted holes in the shadows all around the diner. Webster got us moving, pulled us around the alley behind the restaurant. I peered through the rain at the dumpsters and the scattered garbage. Nothing happened. We had plenty of backup watching the front of the restaurant. We had heavy weapons guys coming in. The helicopter could stay up there all night if it needed to. I tried to relax.

"SWAT's moving," Webster told me. He replaced his radio handset. The dumpster in the alley shifted an inch. Like some homeless guy inside had rolled over in his sleep. Both of us froze for a second. Long enough to be sure we'd both seen it. I brought my weapon up and checked the action. I was loading JHPs for maximal tissue damage and I had sighted in the pistol myself. If I could have gotten my gun blessed by a priest I would have. There was no way this psychopath was walking away tonight.

"Special Deputy Arkeley, maybe we should back off and let SWAT negotiate with him," Webster told me. His using my official t.i.tle meant he wanted to go on the record as doing everything possible to avoid a violent takedown. Covering his a.s.s. We both knew there was no chance of Lares coming peacefully.

"Yeah, you're probably right," I said, my nerves all twisted up. "Yeah." I eased off on my grip on my pistol and kicked angrily at the floorboards. The dumpster came apart in pieces and a white blur launched itself outward, out of the alley. It collided with our car hard enough to knock us up onto two wheels. My door caved in and pinned my arm to my side, trapping my weapon. Webster grabbed for his own handgun even as the car fell back to the road surface, throwing us both up against our seat belts, knocking the wind out of me. Webster reached across me and discharged his weapon three times. I could feel my face and hands burning with spent powder, I could smell cordite and nothing else. I was deaf for a good half minute afterwards. My window exploded outwards but a few tiny cubes of gla.s.s danced and spun in my lap. I turned my head sideways feeling like I was trapped in molten gla.s.s-I could see everything normally but I could barely move. Framed perfectly in the shattered safety gla.s.s was Lares' grinning, torn-up face. Rain was washing the blood off his mouth but it didn't improve his looks. His gla.s.ses were ruined, twisted arms of tortoisesh.e.l.l and cobwebbed lenses. At least one of Webster's shots had gone in through Lares' right eye. The white jelly inside had burst outward and I could see red bone in the socket. The other two bullets had gone into the side of his nose and his right cheek. The wounds were horrible, b.l.o.o.d.y, and definitely fatal.

As I watched they undid themselves. It was like when you run over one of those shatterproof trash cans and they slowly but surely undent themselves, returning to their former shape in seconds. A puff of white smoke in Lares' vacant eye socket solidified, plumped out into a brand new eyeball. The wound in his nose shrank away to nothing and the one in his cheek might as well have been a trick of the light. Like a shadow it just disappeared.

When he was whole and clean again he slowly took the broken gla.s.ses off his face and threw them over his shoulder. Then he opened his mouth and grinned. Every one of his teeth was sharpened to a point. It wasn't like in the movies at all. It looked more like the mouth of a shark, with row after row of tiny knives embedded in his gums. He gave us a good, long look at his mouth and then he jumped over our car. I could hear his feet beating on the roof and he was all at once on the other side. He hit the ground running, running toward Liberty Avenue.

The SWAT team arrived at the corner before he did, sliding out of an armored van, four agents carrying MP5s. They wore full helmets and riot armor but it wasn't standard issue. Their commanding officer had insisted I give them a chance to modify their kit. We all knew what we were getting into, he told me; we'd all seen plenty of movies before.

So the SWAT guys had crucifixes hot-glued all over them, everything they could get, from big carved wood Roman Catholic models with gruesome Jesuses hanging down to dime-store nickel-plated crosses like you would find on a charm bracelet. I bet they felt pretty safe under all that junk.

Lares laughed out loud and tore off his red sweater. Underneath it his torso was one rippling ma.s.s of muscle. White skin, hairless, poreless, writhed over the submerged lumps of his vertebrae. He looked a lot less human with his shirt off. He looked more like some kind of albino bear. A wild animal. A mankiller.

Incident Report filed by Special Deputy Jameson Arkeley, 10/4/83 (Continued): "Don't f.u.c.king move!" one of the cross-covered SWATs shouted. The other three dropped to one knee and raised their MP5s to their shoulders.

Lares rolled forward from the waist, scooping his arms through the air like he could reach over and grab them from a distance. It was an aggressive movement. It was meant to be aggressive. The SWATs did what they'd been trained to do. They opened fire. Their weapons spat fire at the rain and bullets tore through the dark air, narrowly missing our unmarked car. Webster shoved his door open and stepped out into a big puddle. I was right behind him. If we could catch the b.a.s.t.a.r.d in a crossfire maybe we could do more damage than he could heal.

"The heart!" I shouted. "You have to destroy the heart!" The SWATs were professionals. They caught their target center ma.s.s more than they missed him. Lares' big body spun around in the wet. The helicopter came roaring overhead and lit him up with the spotlight so we could see better what we were shooting at. I fired three rounds into his back, one after the other. Webster emptied his clip.

Lares pitched forward like a tree falling down, right in the gutter. He put his hands down to try to stop his fall but they slid out from under him. He lay there unmoving, not even breathing, his hands clutching at handfuls of the tiny yellow locust leaves that clogged up the sewer grate.

The SWATs traded hand signals. One of them moved in, weapon always pointed right at the back of Lares' neck, ready to take a brainstem shot, a traditional kill shot. He was aiming at the wrong place but I didn't think it mattered at that point. There were no visible bullet holes in the subject-they must have healed instantly-but he wasn't moving. The SWAT stepped closer and kicked at one overly muscular leg.

Lares spun around on his side without any warning at all, far faster than a human being could move. He got one knee under him and grabbed at the SWAT's arm to pull himself up. He had no trouble whatsoever getting a grip on all those crosses. The SWAT started to react, bringing his MP5 up, ducking down in a firing crouch. Lares grabbed his helmet in two hands and twisted it right off. The policeman's head came with it.

For a second the decapitated SWAT stood there in a perfect firing crouch. Blood arced up from his gaping neck like a water fountain. Lares leaned forward and lapped at it, getting blood all over his face and chest. He was mocking us. He was G.o.dd.a.m.ned making fun of us.

The SWAT leader started shouting "Man down, man down!" into his radio but Lares was already up and coming for him. He plowed through the rest of the SWATs in a single motion, his fingers tearing at their armor, his mouth fastening around the leader's neck. Those shark-like teeth bit right through the SWAT leader's padded collar. They bit right through a wooden cross and snapped it in pieces. I made a mental note: the cross thing was a myth.

The SWATs died one after the other and all I could do was watch. All I could do was stare. I brought up my weapon as Lares turned and jumped right at us. I would have fired except I was afraid I would hit Webster. Lares was that fast. He went low, diving to grasp Webster around the waist. My partner was still trying to reload his weapon.

Lares tore Webster's leg off at the thigh. He used his mouth. Blood was everywhere and Lares drank as much of it as he could get down his throat. Webster didn't start screaming for a long, horrible second or two. He had time to look at me, his face registering nothing but surprise.

When Lares had finished feeding he rose to a standing posture and smiled at me. His half-naked body was caked with gore. His eyes were bloodshot and his cheeks were glowing pink and healthy. He leaned toward me. He was a good seven feet tall and he towered over me. He reached down and put his hands on my shoulders. His eyes stared into me and I couldn't look away. The hand holding my weapon lost all strength and dangled at my side. He was weakening me, softening me up somehow. I could feel my brain itch-he was hypnotizing me, something, I didn't know. He could kill me any time he wanted. Why was he wasting time with my brain?

Over our heads the helicopter chewed angrily at the air. The spotlight lit up Lares' back and made his hair glow. His eyes narrowed as if the light hurt him a little. He grabbed me around the waist and hauled me up to dangle over his shoulder. I could barely move. I tried to kick and hit and fight but Lares just squeezed me harder until I felt my ribs popping like a string of fireworks. After that it was all I could do to breathe.

He didn't kill me. He had such strength in his arms it would have been easy to kill me, to squeeze me so hard my guts shot out of my mouth. He kept me alive, though, I a.s.sumed as a hostage.

He started to run. My body bounced and flopped on his shoulder. I could only see what was behind us. He was running toward the Strip District, toward the river. When I was planning this takedown I had convinced Pittsburgh Traffic to shut down a big patch of city, to keep the streets empty. I wanted a safe environment in which to pull off my showdown. Lares must have sensed the unusual quiet of the streets. He ran right out into traffic, cars slaloming all around us, steam from the pouring rain rising from their hot lights like the breath of angry bulls. Horns shrieked all around us and I panicked and called out for G.o.d-if one of those cars. .h.i.t us it might not damage Lares at all but I would surely be crushed, broken, impaled.

I could barely see for pain and wet eyes and the stabbing blare of headlights. I was barely cognizant of the fact that Lares had run out onto the 16th Street bridge. I could feel the helicopter above me, following me, its rotor blades pulsing in the dark. I felt Lares bend and flex his legs and then-freefall. The a.s.shole had jumped right off the bridge.

We hit the freezing waters of the Allegheny River so hard and so fast I must have broken half a dozen bones. The cold surged through me like I was being stabbed with icicles all over my body. My heart lurched in my chest and I felt my entire circulatory system seizing up. Lares pulled me down, down into the darkness. I could barely see his white, white face framed by floating black hair like dead seaweed. Breath surged out of me and I started swallowing water.

We must have been under only a few seconds. I couldn't have survived any longer than that. Yet I remember him kicking, his legs snapping through the water. I remember the helicopter's searchlight slanting down through the murk, now this way, now that way, now too far away. Then I couldn't see anything. Air hit my face like a mask of ice had been nailed onto my skull but at least I could breathe. I sucked a great lungful of cold, cold air down inside of me until my body burned. Lares dragged me up over the fibergla.s.s gunwale of a boat, a boat that bobbed and tilted alarmingly under our combined weight. He dragged me, only half alive, below decks.

Incident Report filed by Special Deputy Jameson Arkeley, 10/4/83 (Concluded): Slowly, achingly, warmth returned to my fingertips, my toes. My brain spun inside my head for a while and I couldn't make any sense of my surroundings, I could just hear ringing in my ears. I could taste my own death on the back of my tongue. I had come that close.

Lares bent over me, his fingers probing in my ears and mouth. He tore my shirt away from my neck and shoulder and probed the veins there, tapping at them to get the circulation going. Then he left me there, unbound, all but forgotten. He hadn't said a word to me, not one word. I wasn't supposed to be a hostage, I realized. I was going to be a midnight snack. I'd made enough heat for him that he felt he had to run home, to go to ground. That didn't mean he had to go hungry.

My eyes adjusted to the absolute darkness of the boat's hold, eventually, and I began to make out some details. It was a cramped little s.p.a.ce that smelled of diesel fuel and mildew. It was cold, not as cold as it had been under the river but icy cold all the same. I guess if you're dead you don't need central heating. The usual boat stuff filled most corners of the room-life preservers like giant orange candies, a pair of aluminum oars, folded tarpaulins and sailcloth. Five coffins were leaned up against the shelves and bulwarks or lay flat on the floor. They were relatively plain, dark wood affairs in that elongated hexagonal shape that says "coffin" whenever you see it, even though I don't think anyone had built a coffin like that in fifty years. They had bra.s.s handles and they were all propped open so I could see the overstuffed satin linings. One of them was empty. It was the biggest and it looked about the right size for Lares. It would have looked comical, even cartoonish, except in juxtaposition with the other four, which were all occupied.

The bodies in the coffins were decayed beyond recognition. They were bones, mostly, tied together with sc.r.a.ps of flesh. Some showed old brown stains where blood had washed over them. One had nearly a full head of long white hair like uncombed cotton. One had a single eyeball still in his head, though it was shrunken and dried up until it looked like a white prune. None of the skulls were human. The jaws were thick, st.u.r.dy bone full of broken teeth. Just from the teeth I knew they were all vampires. Maybe they were Lares' family, in a perverse way. Maybe there was a whole lineage of them sleeping in that cramped little ship's hold.

There was something about them, something that made my skin crawl. It took me a long time to realize what it was. The bones in those coffins weren't dead. They were moving. Just barely, just almost imperceptibly, but the bony hands were reaching out. The necks were craning forward. They wanted something. They were desperate for it, desperate enough to strain their dried-up sinews to get at it. As decayed and dilapidated as they might be, these corpses were still undead and still aware of their surroundings. Vampires were supposed to live forever, if they weren't killed. I guess maybe they didn't stay young forever, though. Maybe that was too much to ask.

Lares caught my attention as he started moving around the little s.p.a.ce. He looked different. I focused my eyes and saw that the curly hair on top his head had been a wig-it was gone now and his head was as white and as round as the moon. Triangular ears poked out on either side. Those weren't human ears. I guess I was finally seeing what a vampire really looked like. It wasn't pretty.

Lares knelt next to one of the coffins, his hands bracing him on the wooden lip. He lowered his head over the body and his back began to shake. One of his laughing eyes kept me pinned the whole time. With a horrible retching sound he vomited a half pint of blood into the coffin, right over the corpse's face. He clutched at his sides and heaved again, and again, until the skull was bathed in clotted gore.

Steam rose from the hot blood in the cold room. Steam wreathed the skull, the rib cage of the corpse. Steam coalesced like watery light around the bones, wrapping the vampire remains in illusory flesh and skin. The body plumped out and began to take on something like human form as the blood dripped into the corpse's mouth.

Lares moved to the next corpse. He started coughing and blood flecked his lips. Like a mother bird feeding her young he coughed himself into a spasm until blood dangled in thick ropes from his mouth. Where it touched the corpse steam rose up and a second transformation began. Skin like old mildewed paper rattled as it stretched around the second corpse's ruin. Dark skin, criss-crossed with scars. This one had a tattoo on his bicep. It read "SPQR" in jagged, sloppily-done letters.

The pink hue I'd seen in Lares' cheeks before was gone. He was white as a sheet again. If he was going to feed all of his ancestors he would need to find another blood donor, and soon.

I didn't like my chances.

He managed to vomit up blood all over a third corpse, just with what he had inside of him. He was throwing up death. The death of the waitress in the diner. The deaths of the SWATs we'd foolishly thought were safe under twenty pounds of crosses. He was throwing up bits of Webster, the good cop, throwing up part of Webster's body.

Lares turned to look at me directly. His whole body was shaking. Trembling, even shivering. Feeding his grandparents had taken everything he had. Before he'd fed on the waitress in the diner, had he been this shaky? He tried to meet my gaze but I refused to let him hypnotize me again.

I looked down at my right hand. I was still carrying my sidearm. How I could have held onto it through being carried over Lares' shoulder, through the shock of hitting the river, through being dragged into the boat was a mystery. The cold must have turned my hand into a solid claw around the weapon.

Lares lurched toward me. His speed was gone. His coordination was shot. He was still a bulletproof vampire.

I knew it was hopeless. The SWATs had hit him center left with full automatic machine gun fire but the bullets had never even pierced his skin. They hadn't even grazed his heart, the only vulnerable part of him. I had nothing better to do at that moment, though, then to shoot every last bullet I had.

I discharged my weapon into his chest. I shot him. Again and again until I was deaf with the noise and blind with the muzzle flash. I had three bullets left in my gun and I put all of them into his chest. The hollow point rounds tore him open, splatted the boat's hold with bits and strips of his white, white skin. He

tried to laugh but his voice came out as a weak hiss, air escaping from a punctured tire. I saw his rib cage torn open, exposed, flayed. I saw his lungs, slack and lifeless in his chest. He came closer. Closer. Closer. Close enough-I reached out with my left hand and grabbed at the twisted dark muscle that had once been his heart.

He howled in pain. So did I. His body was already repairing the damage I'd done, his cells knitting back together around the gun shot wounds. His ribs grew back like scissor blades crunching down on the more fragile bones of my wrist, trapping my hand inside of his body. His skin grew back over my arm and pulled at me, pulled me toward him.

I plucked his heart out like pulling a peach off a tree. Lares' face turned dark with horror, his eyes wild, his mouth flapping open like he couldn't control it, blood and spit flying from his chin. His nostrils flared and a stench like an open sewer bellowed up out of every one of his orifices. The heart leapt in my hand, trying to get back where it belonged, but I used the tiny shred of strength left to me to squeeze, to hold on. Lares slapped at me with his hands but there was no real strength left in his muscles. He dropped to his knees and howled and howled and howled. It started to sound like mewling after a while. He was losing the strength to even scream properly.

Still he wouldn't just die. He was holding on to what strange kind of unlife he had ever possessed, clutching like a junkie at an empty syringe, trying through sheer willpower to not die.

His eyes met mine and he tried to suck me in. He tried to hypnotize me, to weaken me once more. It didn't work.

When he finally stopped moving it was nearly dawn. I held his heart in my clenched fist and it felt like an inert stone. The other vampires, the decayed ones, came slithering out of their coffins, reaching for him, reaching for me. They didn't understand what had happened. They were blind and deaf and dumb and all they knew was the taste of blood. I kicked them away and through the pain, through the shock, managed to get to my feet.