Dark Whispers 03

Things That Go Bump in the Night

Harry joined me once he had cleaned up a bit. I was taking a little more time as my snack was still moving. A long slurp finished off Mac and I tossed him to the ground.

I looked at the rapidly chilling corpse and decided a bit of staging would be needed. Even dead it appeared my boy was still lusting for me. Harry noticed that too, tossed a look at me and had a comment. "Well, Cassandra, at least he died happy."

"No, just terminally stupid." The two young men had been down at my cousin Greg's van and seen the bloody scene and various bits of gore, but from our brief conversation knew nothing of any value. The smell of the moderate quality marijuana they had been enjoying before our arrival still lingered while the last wisps of their lives dissipated into the night's cold air.

Contrary to popular stories, these two would not become vampires if left for discovery. As is, they would just become too interesting a topic for the local police and newspapers. No, Harry and I needed to do something with the bodies of Mac and Art. The dogs who were still looking for Greg and Elisa down by the river would discover them sooner or later. And I figured it would be best if they were discovered and not immediately associated with the mystery surrounding my cousin's bloody van.

Harry tossed me the Buck knife he always had with him. I noticed he that had wiped off somebody's blood recently. Arching an eyebrow at him, I shrugged and started my end of the clean up of our signs of having drunk from them. Sighing, since basically I had started this mess, I began stripping off various pieces of skin and nicking bones and tendons with the speed of my carving. I sliced out my fang marks and made assorted stabs in his body and on his neck.

Quickly my clothing was getting soaked with sweat from my exertions and stray splatters. The actual 'draining' of a body is rarely completely empty. It can be done, but takes more time and other assorted toys I hadn't brought with me. About twenty minutes passed in silence while I made Mac into a freshly murdered victim. Once I had finished my part of the setting, Harry dragged his corpse next to mine. Harry had been far neater in his fanging by comparison to me. I had thought with the sounds he had made off the pathway earlier that Harry had slain Art on the jugular like I had Mac, but I could see that Harry had given it more thought.

Art had been partially unclothed by Harry. Harry had pulled Art's shirt up over his head and punctured his stomach with his knife. That explained the blood on the knife. Rarely does Harry leave evidence to be found. When I had been hacking at my boy I found a knife in his pocket similar to Harry's. I tossed it to Harry once I jabbed it in Mac's corpse a few times.

"You will owe me a new knife, you realize," he said once we finished staging the confusing evidence of possibly a murder-suicide or some other strange game gone badly.

Wagging a finger at Mac's still obvious arousal, Harry said to the body, "See what trouble you can get into out here. Now all your friends will say they knew you were different. Or they will blame the drugs." He made sure to leave the remainder of their smoke within one of the guys' right hand fingers. The heavily nicotine stained fingers helped guide Harry's choice of hands. I was pretty sure it was Mac's paw. But who knew for sure with all the work we had done?

We slowly glanced around and made sure the apparent sex scene was set properly and nodded. Finding a condom in Mac's wallet was a nice touch. It was ripped open with Mac's other lifeless hand and dropped within the boundaries of the scene.

"Poor Art just wasn't interested. Don't you know that 'No' means no?" Harry was an expert at making folks thinks what he wanted. Years of training weren't wasted and we both had a similar macabre sense of humor. I felt great teaming up with Harry again. I needed some relaxing fun like killing stupid humans to take my mind off my cousin's slaying and what that meant to me.

The van in the distance was still being processed for evidence while we finished up planting our tidbits for the crime lab to play with once the site was discovered. Harry took a cutting from a nearby bit of chaparral and brushed away our footprints. We stepped slowly over the rocks and dirt keeping our shoes on the hard surfaces. Silently and slowly we exited from the area and continued back towards the van, downwind from the dogs.

"Damn it, Cassandra, that was fun, but there is no way I can walk you down to the van scene looking like you do."

Harry had a silly grin plastered on his face. He no longer was looking as stressed or worried as he had earlier. Glancing down to my clothing I could see why I wouldn't be welcome at the site. For all my trying to be neat, a few bits of Mac were still on me. I took a moment to toss the larger bits back towards the corpses. My aim was off and I saw one chunk hit further away than necessary. That would confuse them for sure. Oh well.

When we were near some trees we stopped. Harry and I stared at the distant hustle of the cops and tried to read the expressions on their faces. After concluding the only thing I was seeing was disgust and some fear I turned to Harry.

"So talk to me." I said while leaning against an oak. The night was cool and the tree still radiated the day's warmth. Maybe there was a reason Harry liked trees so much.

"No, my dear Cassandra, you need to fill me in on your escapades for New Year's Eve." Harry had resumed his new gloomy expression and was waiting for me to reply.

Reluctantly I started to spit out the basics. "Bad fix up date, left shortly after midnight. Caught a cab to Kenyon's latest place. You know he brought all his old people with him? Jane doesn't look a day over 20 and has been with him for what, three or four decades now? She has put off becoming a vampire but still is close enough to get all the benefits."

That still irked me that some pseudo vampires could hang around for years and be noncommittal. Oh, sure, some vampires needed human helpers, but Jane just didn't want to give up her alleged independence. As she faithfully followed Kenyon wherever he went, it seemed pretty stupid to me. At least Donnie was a full-fledged vampire. He was a sweetie and I felt bad I hadn't got to talk with him much. Since I had gone my separate ways from Kenyon and his crowd I missed the gatherings.

Harry looked over to me and said slowly, "You weren't banned from playing with Kenyon and his crowd. You decided to go your own way."

That was true but not the whole story. Kenyon was heading for a fall soon. I was not going to be part of that unholy war of vampires. I have survived one or two purging events and had no desire to revisit that particular set of horrors. Vampires were not nice to each other when at battle. We have had far too many years to perfect the art and were not especially timid when it came to bloodshed.

I sulked for a second while I tried to figure out what to tell Harry that he didn't already know or suspect. He tended to keep an eye on me. He probably had bugs in my computer as well as my place. I knew vampires were semi-voyeuristic and I had pretty much resigned myself to being watched most of the time. Guarding against being discovered by humans made most long-lived vampires just that. And I wanted to be one of the longer-lived vampires more than a flaming example of what not to do and who not to piss off.

"That said," I began slowly, "Kenyon had been letting Greg run wild from what I saw. He thought there would be no repercussions from his making his own cadre of vampires. Kenyon has also been dabbling in a breeding program of his own. The club has way too high a profile and we both know how well vampires like the spotlight."

Harry nodded and said, "But you didn't cause that, Kenyon did. Not everyone near Kenyon will be slain."

"Nicely said, but I would be high on the list of kills. Kenyon and I go back too far and I have colored outside the lines more than once myself."

At that he chuckled and agreed, "But Cassandra, you haven't been near him for decades. There is no formal tie between you."

I looked at him. "Except for my blood-line pal, Greg. And now someone saw fit to dispose of him before I could. Is this a good thing or not?"

Silently we continued to brood on everything this evening had brought and quietly watched the cops trail back and forth gathering what little evidence there was to be found. It was obvious they had not found Greg's and Elisa's bodies and it would only be a matter of time before someone down there suggested they get a bit further from the van.

"We can't stay here indefinitely, Harry, those dogs are going to figure out there is more up here to find." I whispered, fidgeting a bit. My clothing had started to dry and I was uncomfortable. All those humans who thought we were so special for being supernatural beings had never felt some of the things we had. My sweat was coffee laced, but thankfully, I smelled more like coffee than dead Mac.

"Yes, let's go back to the diner. Kirk should have sped out of there by now." Harry said, pushing up from the tree he had been leaning against.