Bohemian Morning 12

Chapter Twelve

Dropping quietly from my tree branch on the edge of the park was my first act; while quickly passing the body underneath the bench, I pulled the knife out of Fred's quickly chilling body. Not one to waste any opportunities, I flayed open both men's throats rapidly killing them to prevent any heroics they possibly possessed. Yeah, literally overkill, but it's not like vampires are known for kindness or forgiveness. I didn't need one of those idiots springing up and pulling me down or distracting me even for a second on my way to ambushing Bob. Needing my hands free, I simply tossed the knife off into the fog laced bushes; I had plans for Bob that didn't include any untimely interruptions.

Bob had moved swiftly, trying to catch up with the girls who'd run off and I caught him two homes past the edge of the park. My vampire skills were needed to snatch him swiftly and cleanly. I couldn't feel any eyes on me, but had no way of knowing if we were visible on any motion sensor electronic devices. I cursed the current age and fate -- karma -- what have you -- came to my rescue in the form of fog. Thick fog began rolling densely down the street filling in all the edges and more gaps in the darkness. The girls were still galloping ahead of us on their spike pumps -- clutching each other, whimpering now as the initial rush of adrenaline dropped. Little old Stephanie needed to dump her gun and wash off the gun powder residue before she got caught. The fog wisped in between Bob and them as he drew not twenty feet from them. I took advantage of nature's gift and leaped onto his back while covering his mouth. He was a good foot taller than me but my speed and vampiric strength more than eclipsed his usual advantage. Well, that and he had no clue that I even existed until my fingers covered his mouth.

Touching him filled in the gaps in my education about dear old Bob. I really had picked up the essence of the leader during my sipping blood from his crew. But I had no idea truly how much a sociopath he was. The distance of hero worship for their leader along with the lies and half-truths he'd spread over the years had kept the boys unaware of the spare games he'd played without their knowledge. He'd been a very naughty busy boy.

The women kept distancing themselves from the park as I literally pulled Bob kicking and squirming backwards on his heels rapidly. Rolling off him was a wicked amount of anger and sheer hate that rarely was seen by me from humans. He'd yet to process me and was simply pissed off that I'd caught him. He thought he was immortal, and I looked forward to my re-education of this puny human. His world view was skewed by his currently untested track record of harm and mayhem. He'd never encountered anything like me and had been unchallenged in life by anyone to date. My fangs snicked fully down and I laughed softly, revealing my sex, but he didn't know my nature. He was positive he would be able to flip around being the victim and was lusting to cause me pain. He was actually an active psychopath with a deep history of killing women the flannel boys never knew he'd slain. Had he been a vampire I would've been mildly impressed by his number of bodies in his short life, but the fact his victims were only defenseless women brought out my anger. I wasn't a fan of macho men to start but when you added in the fact he drugged the ladies for his own amusement and had trained all of his little buddies on the tricks of his dark trade raised my hackles and vindictiveness to another level.

He tried to dig his heels into the pavement, but the boots slipped on the foggy surface and I took a second to take away one of my hands long enough to sucker punch the bastard hard into his back right at his kidney. He crumpled and now I was stuck dragging soon to be dead weight. He mistakenly assumed his weight would slow me down. Had I been human he'd have been right but to his dismay I hadn't slowed down in the least but in fact I was picking up speed as I grew more and more upset hearing his thoughts leaking out of his skin. I needed a deep cleaning and bleach to get his taint off me soon.

My hands were back around his mouth and I was pulling him by his face into the park he'd just fled, and I heard his thoughts of stunned amazement at my strength and speed. He still hadn't given any thought to losing to me but was still counting on his ability to talk his way free, or wrestle me off him long enough to get a chance to punish me for my arrogance. Again, I found it amusing he thought he'd ever get the upper hand, but depending on my mood I might allow him to speak just so I could feed his hope while ripping it away in my punishment. I planned on punishing him far worse than anything he'd ever done, and with a smile I'd remove all of his arrogance and self-entitled conceit. It wouldn't in any way make up for the crimes he'd committed, but at least he wouldn't be walking this earth to add to his body count. The police would be able to close the books on many deaths and rapes once they found his corpse. I had played with the idea of not allowing him to be discovered, but felt it was my obligation to the families left behind. The wake of his body-filled past was on level with far too many human serial killers. He had known he wasn't on anyone's radar for more than a decade and it sped up his murders. He gloated over his nasty skills.

We finally reached the bench where Fred's corpse was starting to look like bad art. The blood had congealed in an irregular pattern and his face was nearly blue in the diffused light hitting him. Yeah, not pretty but hey, nothing he didn't deserve in my book. As I spun Bob around and pushed him onto a cement bench next to Fred's body, he was free to speak. And naturally his personality made that option give him unfounded hope. I felt his nerves quicken as he started doing the mental gymnastics that he was relying on to set him free, and then his erroneous assumption that he'd be able to kill me at his leisure. That false hope was the reason I allowed him to utter another word. It was nectar for me nearly as lush as the blood running through his veins.

"Pretty lady, we need to talk. You're making a huge mistake." His eyes were icy blue and so sincere I kinda understood women falling for his crap. Not a puppy dog expression but the 'naughty bad boy' they thought they'd redeem by their love or just their sex. They couldn't know his hidden depths and that not only did he not like women he truly hated humanity and loved destroying people. His self-awareness included the knowledge his murders caused pain to everyone the victim knew and resonated forever by his acts -- that was his tasty crunchy treat. He didn't really have any feelings, but he enjoyed the pain he caused -- physically to the victim and after he was done, he'd get close to his victims' friends and families hurting from their loss. I was challenged by his mental illness to create in him some feelings other than satisfaction before his death.

It's pretty well known that sociopaths and psychopaths are incurable under current mental illness treatments. Most psychiatrists gloat about such a mental diagnosis being given in their field as it basically has unicorn-like elements. That's to say they really can't 'cure' such humans but chemically lobotomize as best standards allow. The past treatments for such illness was an actual frontal lobotomy --removing part of a human's brain or severing the bits and pieces inside prefrontal cortex -- which didn't truly treat the maladies but just removed the impulses from the memory and helped with depression -- usually. Over the centuries megalomaniacs -- garden variety dictators and tyrants scattered through history -- have received the label psychopaths and sociopaths but let me tell you that isn't necessarily true. My personal experiences with such slices of humanity have yielded a vastly different impression about psychopaths. Rarely do they enjoy running and ruining countries but really, they prefer to keep their victims closer and personal. They feed off the pain and death nearly as neatly as I do off the fear and blood from which I slake my vampire hunger. Predators do come in many flavors, and all aren't nearly as clever as they think, especially when up against supernaturals; we are true apex predators.

Bob had run his band of not-so-merry marauders for a few decades undetected or even arrested. They had grown up together, schooled together and at times -- some had even worked day jobs together. But their real dark brotherhood was firmly bonded in sex and bits of bloody rapes that they enjoyed together like a drunken frat party that continued on unchecked and escalating for years past their early twenties. As they weren't caught or even suspected of the crimes, they drugged their prey and shared their victims throughout the years -- undetected and uncaring of the resulting chaos visited upon the females they grabbed from parties and bars. Mostly they left them stoned out of their minds and barely alive. Roofies did tend to do their own chemical rearranging inside the bodies of the girls and after the women were dumped off after being raped and at times bruised and beaten, they would unfortunately die.

Unknown to the rest of his gang, Bob didn't much care for the possibilities of being picked out of a police lineup at any time in the future and after a bit of time he'd swing back by the girls houses (addresses and phone numbers always carefully recorded in Bob's little coded black book along with dates of the 'incident' and what was done during their play dates) and murder them. Not quickly he'd torment these broken dolls, but after extended sexual encounters with just the boss. He took his time with the ladies and didn't give them the cushioning of drugs or alcohol. He preferred them alive and conscious for his extreme abuse. The trendy term 'present' or 'in the now' could be bantered about for his functioning as well as some other cliquey phrases. I just called it pure psychopath. He loved the game, the chase, the abuse, the power but most of all he loved killing them -- as much as his kind could love.

It wasn't like I could fault him for his enjoyment of killing, but as a vampire I found him not worthy of surviving crossing paths with me. Had Fred simply apologized or left me alone after bumping into me in the bar, I never would've bothered with Bob and the flannel boys. But chaos and karma are kissing cousins in my world, I'd noticed. The chance encounter in a bar I frequented during a foggy fall night brought me to my current problem. I looked at the suave psycho and let him continue to put nails in his own coffin.

Still meeting my eyes with his own pretty blue ones, he said, "You know I wasn't going to harm those girls. They were beyond drunk, and asking to be frightened, right?" The mocking lilt in his semi-question was what he thought cute and adorable to his ears. He waited while smiling up at me with a slight smirk actively trying to generate an empathic feeling from me. Yeah, that was so not going to happen. I didn't have any empathy for humans. He thought I was going to agree with him while sitting next to Fred who was admittedly dead. How did he think that fact was going to be explained away? 'Don't look at the dead man' or 'Girls love being frightened by strangers' didn't quite seem to be in the least believable to me as something anyone rational would think. The eyes -- vivid blue and very intensely looking into mine -- were flat. I don't mean the shape or something weird like that but predatory flat like the eyes you see in a big ass captive shark while visiting SeaWorld or another aquarium. I'd noticed sharks were great at relaying their thoughts with that flat stare -- other animals also had the look, but his was closest to a shark in my opinion. Not friendly in any manner, but extremely vicious and angry. He was watching me for any weakness or fear to feed off and exploit to his personal benefit.