Dave Zeltserman - Blood Crimes Book One

Yeah, it was hot and stuffy back there, with the temperature reaching over ninety degrees, but it didn’t bother Metcalf. Instead, it brought back his pre-infection days when he was a field agent for the CIA. Back then he spent countless hours in the back of vans like this one in countries throughout Europe and the Middle East, at times the temperature baking the inside of his van to well over a hundred and twenty degrees. He’d sit quietly for hours to get the job done, sometimes eavesdropping, sometimes peering through the scope of a sniper rifle waiting for his target to show, but never letting the temperature or anything else affect him. Early on the CIA realized what they had-a pure sociopathic personality with a high intellect- and they put him on the dirtiest work they had. Metcalf flourished with it. What helped was he didn’t suffer from the other psychological defects that most other sociopaths tend to exhibit-he had no sexual deviancies, no sadistic tendencies, and took no pleasure from his killings. He didn’t enjoy it, but it didn’t bother him either. To him it was no different than flipping a light switch. He was good at what he did, one of the best the CIA had.

After ten years as a top assassin, he was unofficially brought back to New York and very quietly introduced to the wife of a dot-com billionaire. Her husband had supposedly fallen under the spell of some Eurotrash whore, and had transferred most of his wealth to this woman, leaving the wife only the fifty million she was allowed under the prenup she signed. The husband had since dropped out of the real world to live in this whore’s converted hotel that was located in the Union Square area of downtown Manhattan. The wife met alone with Metcalf, telling him how she wanted this bitch killed, figuring that that would break the spell and send her husband back to her, and she was prepared to transfer two million dollars to an offshore account for Metcalf to get the job done. He agreed to do it. Two million dollars would more than adequately pay for his retirement, and the job had a wink-nod sanction from his boss who was an acquaintance of the wife’s family. Anyway, it didn’t matter to him what light switches he flipped as long as he was compensated properly for it.

He spent a week in an untraceable van parked outside of the once-upon-a-time hotel that his target now owned and operated as a private residence, all the while peering out a rifle scope that was trained on the building’s front door. This was during a brutally hot and muggy period in August, but Metcalf sat motionless as he waited for his target to show. Anyone looking at him would’ve thought he was a marble sculpture, not even a drop of perspiration showing. If he got his chance to take his target out, the van would disappear from the face of the planet, and nothing would ever be able to connect him with the hit. After a week without seeing anyone enter or leave the building he was beginning to have his doubts whether anyone was actually inside. The windows had all been painted black so he couldn’t look through them, and if people were leaving and getting back into the hotel he had no idea how they were doing it. For all he knew they had all packed up weeks ago to go to the Hamptons for the season. He decided to break in, do some recon, and take her out if she was actually holed up in there. Breaking in was easy, he used a grappling hook to scale up to a fourth floor landing, then broke in through a window. He had a. 45 with an attached silencer and enough extra magazines to take out a small village. His plan was to move from room to room until he either found his target or uncovered information as to where she was. Anyone else he came across would be knocked unconscious if he could do it quietly, if not, he’d take them out also.

The first room he entered he was quiet enough that no one should’ve been able to hear him, and was surprised when a scrawny-looking man turned to face him. What seemed odd to him was the way the man’s nose wrinkled, almost as if he had smelled Metcalf. The man was a skinny runt who couldn’t have been more than half of Metcalf’s weight. Metcalf put a finger to his lips to warn him to be quiet. Instead the man came after him, moving faster than anyone should’ve been able to. Metcalf still got off two kill shots that hit the man squarely in the heart, but other than knocking him back a foot, didn’t stop him. He just kept coming. Metcalf couldn’t believe the strength or the quickness of this man as he grabbed Metcalf’s wrist and snapped it, then picked Metcalf up and slammed him to the floor. It didn’t make any sense. The man couldn’t be more than a buck thirty, and Metcalf should’ve been able to handle him easily, instead he was held immobile on the floor until his target was called into the room.

She took his. 45 off him, then pulled his black knit mask off his face and stared at him with both curiosity and amusement mixing in her eyes. With a short nod she had the other man get off him while she took his place. She was tall but as skinny as a rail, and couldn’t have weighed more than ninety pounds, and he couldn’t budge under her grip. It made no logical sense. He accepted the fact that he was in over his head, that this was something far outside the norm, and that he was a dead man. It didn’t much matter to him. He was one of those rare sociopaths who valued his own life as little as he did others.

“You came here to kill me,” she said softly, more as a statement than a question, her voice hypnotic, almost trance-like. He found himself strongly attracted to her. It was partly her looks and partly this dense odor of sexuality that came off her like musk, but it was more than that. He could see in her eyes the same cold ruthlessness that he saw every day when he looked in a mirror. They were kindred spirits, and he had met so few in his lifetime.

It didn’t matter anymore. It was over. He nodded. At that moment he felt no allegiance to the woman who had hired him, nor to The Company.

“You’re a hit man, aren’t you?”

He didn’t bother answering her since it was obvious.

She spoke with the man who had disabled him, asking whether Metcalf had made any noise when he broke into the room. The man shook his head and said the only noise was his heart beating. “And it was a slow, calm beat,” he added.

“You must be well-trained,” she said to Metcalf. “You’re not even showing any pain over your broken wrist.”

“What would be the point?” he said.

She nodded at that and asked him who he worked for. He told her. She seemed surprised about that. “Why would the CIA even know about me?” she asked.

“They’re don’t. This is an outside job.”

He explained to her then who he had been hired by and why. “I’d like to ask a favor,” he said. “Could you get this over with quickly?”

She showed a thin impish smile.

“Get what over with, darling?”

“Whatever you’re going to do to me. Kill me, I suppose.”

Seconds before he had seen his death in her eyes, but that changed. Her eyes softened subtly, and he guessed that she must’ve also recognized him as a kindred spirit.

“But darling,” she said, laughing lightly. “If I were to do that I’d have to offer you a last meal first, and I’m afraid what we have here isn’t anything you’d care to imbibe in, at least not at this time. Later, perhaps.”

A small crowd that had gathered behind her, and they started to complain once they realized she’d had a change of heart. She quieted them, then moved in close to Metcalf, her teeth caressing his throat for several seconds before biting in. Somehow he knew she was going to do that. He also knew what was going to happen. None of it came as a surprise, and he quietly made his transition from spook to vampire. Later, after his fever had broken and he had gone through the changes, he cleaned up whatever loose ends had been left. He took care of the dot-com billionaire’s wife, his ex-boss and anyone else who might’ve been able to connect him to Serena. As far as the CIA was concerned he had dropped off the face of the planet.