Dave Zeltserman - Blood Crimes Book One

Jim’s eyes softened as he smiled weakly at her, not because he believed her, but thankful for the effort. The two of them embraced with Carol’s thin arms squeezing Jim as hard as she could. Her mouth searched for his, but he pulled back. He didn’t want her tasting the dead thug’s blood, nor did he want to risk her picking up any diseases.

“After I clean up,” he promised her.

It was several hours later that Jim walked into a biker bar a few miles upriver from The Flats. There were maybe fifty Harleys parked out front, and the place was crowded with a mostly even mix of men and women. A live band covering Grand Funk Railroad songs from the 70s played on a small stage. Before finding the bar, Jim had brought Carol back to their motel, showered off the blood that had splattered on him and had changed into some clean clothes. He also used Listerine and, convinced it was now safe, embraced Carol before he left with a long passionate kiss. She still wanted to go with him, but he convinced her that it would be better if he went alone.

He squeezed through the crowd to the bar and ordered a Bud that he wasn’t going to be drinking, then found an inconspicuous spot to stand and watch the activity around him. It didn’t take long to spot the drug dealer supplying the room; if the guy wasn’t a drug dealer he had a serious bladder problem with the number of trips he made to the men’s room. He wore a black leather jacket, faded jeans and storm trooper boots, and had gang-style tattoos decorating his neck and shaved skull. Hooded grinning skulls wrapped in barbed wire, winged dragons and Chinese letters. He probably would’ve been good looking if he let his hair grow over his tattoos and his face hadn’t been scarred by a fire. Other guys in the bar would seek him out, and after a brief discussion, they’d head to the men’s room. The drug dealer was a big guy, but two much bigger guys dressed the same and with the same pattern of tattoos on their shaved skulls followed him into the men’s room for each transaction.

Jim waited until the drug dealer was approached by another buyer, then made a beeline to the men’s room. The band was playing Some Kind of Wonderful and the place was lively with all the attention turned toward the stage. Jim snaked through the crowd unnoticed. He found an empty stall and crouched on the toilet seat, sitting on his heels. A couple of minutes later a small crowd entered the men’s room. From the crack in the stall door, Jim saw the money and drugs trade hands. The customer left first while the drug dealer stayed behind to add more money to his roll.

In a fluid panther-like motion, Jim sprung forward, pulling himself head first through the three-foot opening between the stall and the ceiling, and landing inches behind the drug dealer. Before the dealer could react, Jim banged his head off the sink. It all happened in the blink of an eye. The sound of the blow made only a dull thud, but it was enough to get one of the bodyguards turning around.

“What the fuck-” the bodyguard started. Before he could finish his thought, Jim clanged his head off his partner’s. The bodyguard slid to the floor. His partner, though, wobbled on his feet, and stared groggily at Jim.

“You’re a fucking dead man,” he mumbled, his words coming out like a punch-drunk boxer’s. He reached clumsily inside his leather jacket, but before he could do anything else, Jim grabbed him by the collar and head butted him hard enough to knock him out. Using one hand he half-lifted and half-dragged the guy to the empty stall and propped him on the toilet so he was sitting up. Jim stood back and gave the man a hard stare. He didn’t like the fact that the guy had gotten a look at him, but fuck it, getting his head clanged the way he did probably left him too groggy to see straight. Besides, Jim didn’t plan on staying in Cleveland long, and as much as the world would be a better place without these three, it wasn’t his call. He left to get the other bodyguard, stacked him on top of the first, then did the same with the drug dealer. He locked the stall from the inside and slid under the opening at the bottom. Glancing under the stall he could only make out one pair of legs.

The drug dealer’s roll lay on the floor. Jim took off the rubber band holding it together and counted over nine thousand dollars. More than enough to keep him and Carol going for months.

A window opened up into an alleyway in back of the bar. Jim went through it and disappeared into the night.

Faces of the perverts and rapists and sociopaths that Jim had killed over the last three years blurred in his mind into something generic, something almost cartoonish. Outside of that first thug who attacked Carol in Newark, it was hard for him to recall any of them. Even the latest one from only several hours before. Their faces just kept fading in and out, never quite coming into focus. He forced himself to concentrate, to try to picture what at least one of them looked like, but couldn’t do it. Whenever he came close, the image would morph into Bluto from those old Popeye cartoons. Giving up, he forced himself to count how many of these predators he had killed since hooking up with Carol. It took a while but he came up with a number-a hundred and ten, plus the two vampires that Serena had sicced on him. Fuck. If this kept up and he lived to a ripe old age he could go down as one of the deadliest serial killers in history, or the most successful vigilante, depending on your point of view. The fact that these were all violent sociopathic thugs, the worst that humanity had to offer, only slightly helped to ease his conscience. No matter how hard he tried convincing himself otherwise, it still came down to that he was robbing them of any chance of redemption. Even though he had to kill them for his survival, he probably wouldn’t be able to do it if they weren’t trying to hurt Carol. Not that he hadn’t killed before becoming a vampire.

Yeah, he had killed more than his share before that…

Shit, maybe even more than since his infection…

His thoughts drifted back to his days during the First Gulf War when he had been a member of a special forces unit that was taking out command and communication bunkers in Western Iraq. This was during the first wave of bombings when the Iraqi Republican Guard were buried deep underground. His team blew their way into those bunkers, tossed down tear gas canisters, then Jim would lead the charge. He was good at what he did and killed most of them himself before the other members of his team could get in on the action. Afterwards they would collect whatever intel they could find and blow up what was left inside. He killed a lot of Iraqis during those first few days, enough to fuck him up good for a long time afterwards.

After his stint in the army, he wandered aimlessly for the next eight years. For a while he took whatever odd jobs came his way; short order cook, bartender, bouncer, fisherman, lumberjack, even a short time as a bodyguard for one of Hollywood’s leading divas, but he couldn’t stay put in any one place for too long. He couldn’t sleep at night and was too antsy during the day to be able to concentrate on anything. After a few months in one place, the pressure inside would get to where he felt like he couldn’t breathe, like he had a knife pressed against his heart. He’d have to move then. After six years of this, he stopped giving a shit altogether. He stopped working and instead started doing smash and grabs, burglaries and purse snatches for his drinking money. Nothing too violent, but still enough too leave him filled with even more self-loathing. A short time later he started worshipping the needle and the release that gave him. The heroin numbed him out and kept him from slicing his wrists each night. For almost a year after that he was in freefall, and by all rights he should’ve ended up dead, contracting AIDS or in prison for a good five to ten year stretch, and if it wasn’t for a chance encounter in Austin, Texas, one of those fates probably would’ve happened.