The Vampire Witness

The Vampire Witness A Flesh Shadows Appetiser Lenka Dusek Smashwords Edition Copyright © 2013, Lenka Dusek All Rights Reserved. ISBN: 9781301459537 Smashwords Edition, License Notes This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author. The Vampire Witness It was meant to be an ordinary hunt. Sam certainly hadn’t set out with a mind to kill a young child that night. Her usual quarry was strong young men who could run fast and put up a spirited fight, not little girls who would freeze and whimper at the first sign of trouble. In fact she had never actually killed a child before. But some things are a matter of survival, and if the path of a vampire and that of a youngling happened to intersect, whether intended or otherwise, then the youngling had to be sacrificed to the cause. That’s just the way it was. The incident that brought about those circumstances took place at around eleven o’clock one bleak autumn night. The air was icy cold, and breathing it in bit into the back of the throat. Because of that the suburban neighbourhoods were all but deserted… people huddled indoors around open hearths with crackling fires. Sam had been prowling about outside for some time. She was immune to the chill. Right now she was perched on the side of a lofty church steeple, her feet tucked back to back on a narrow ledge that few humans would dare balance on and her arms hugging the old stone faces. Such a lofty position gave her a good view of the suburbs. She was watching a small house at the edge of town. Inside a lively domestic dispute was going on, and the shadows of furiously waving arms could be seen dancing across the curtains. The young woman of the house was in fine fettle – throwing pots and breaking glass and screaming blue murder at the top of her lungs. She had the upper hand on her partner, who could barely be heard raising his deep muffled voice in protest. Sam listened to such domestic squabbles with relish. She delighted in them. More often than not the man would come storming out of the house, or get kicked out of the house by his partner, and then would walk off into the unknown for a bit of “quiet time”. At that point he would usually head for the beachfront, or a deserted park, or perhaps even along a forest path… wherever there were the fewest people to trouble him. For Sam that made for easy pickings. A sure kill. Not only could she enjoy a leisurely hunt with plenty of running space, but she also had plenty of time to feed and dispose of the body afterwards. For when a man left a house with that sort of emotional turmoil going on in his life, the search party was never called out straight away. The general understanding most people had was that he must be taking a bit of time-out somewhere to cool down. Well, as it transpired this occasion lived up to Sam’s expectations perfectly. The door opened, a yellow square of light fell upon the lawn, and a man came rushing out with his head ducked down. He needed to have his head ducked down because flying through the air after him was a thick glass preserving jar. He scuttled toward the front gate without as much as a shred of dignity. ‘Don’t you come back!’ screamed the woman looming up in the doorframe. She had the attractive figure of a young lady, but looked a bit of a sight standing there on the front porch in a petticoat with her long brunette hair all mussed up. Her hands were waving about furiously. ‘I mean it! Don’t you come back!’ The man beseeched her. ‘Lisa, we can work through this!’ ‘Go away!’ ‘Lisa!’ complained the man. He swallowed the next words he wanted to say because he had to duck behind the white picket fence of the property in order to avoid another projectile. It went over his head and hit the road with a clash of glass. A few seconds later he poked his head above the wooden palings and pleaded again. ‘Please Lisa, don’t shut me out of your life! Don’t do this!’ ‘You’re a lying bastard!’ cried the woman. ‘You’re being unreasonable! It’s a misunderstanding. Let’s sit down and talk this through!’ ‘Talk about?’ exclaimed the woman. ‘What’s there to talk about? You lying, cheating piece of crap!’ ‘No, Lisa, no! ‘You don’t understand! It’s just a little complicated right now! Come on!’ ‘Complicated? What’s complicated about keeping your promise!’ ‘I know what I said but…’ ‘You said you’d leave her! You told me you’d leave her you two timing bastard!’ ‘Lisa!’ But by now the woman was too worked up. She was too livid to carry on any sort of rational discussion. ‘Get out!’ she screamed. ‘GET OUT!’ The man realised that she was too irascible to deal with. He finally gave up the fight. With slow steps he started walking backwards along the footpath, looking with pleading eyes at the woman and begging with his hands. But no words came out of his mouth. Those last feeble efforts were to no avail. The woman ignored him despairing importunes. She slammed the front door so hard that the windows in the little kitchen shook, then stomped off down the hallway with such heavy steps that they could be head down the street. The hallway light flicked off and the yellow square of light vanished from the lawn. Sam had watched the whole thing from the nearby church with a sense of growing amusement. She hadn’t moved from her perch on the steeple ledge. It was a good lookout spot because a nearby poplar tree threw a dark shadow over her and she could enjoy a panoramic view over the neighbourhood without being seen. At the moment she could see a number of busybody neighbours pulling back their curtains and staring with surly faces at the house responsible for causing all the raucous. The domestic dispute had certainly roused a lot of them. Flower patterned curtain fabric was fluttering all the way down the street. The rejected man didn’t appear to pay them any attention. He headed down the footpath for a few hundred meters and then veered off down an alleyway that led to the nearby forest. Sam smiled to herself when she saw him go that way. She licked her top lip softly and willed him to carry on. It was a perfect trap. Once he was in the forest she had him. She knew all too well that a vampire’s prey had to be in the right spot for an attack. It had to be a place where there were absolutely no witnesses. That’s because if the inhabitants of a city ever got wind of the fact there was a vampire in their midst they would probably do something about it. Folks had a nasty habit of forming hunting parties and tracking down vampires with relentless, vehement determination… not stopping until the dark one was destroyed. It was a simple, inescapable fact. Over the centuries many a line of vampire had been wiped out due to the prying eyes of a single witness, who either rallied the masses into torch wielding mobs, or became a one man vigilante and tracked down the vampire’s sarcophagus or burial place by himself. It was therefore absolutely crucial for survival that a revenant kept a low profile… no witnesses, no evidence, no pattern. Be invisible or be eliminated. That’s why Sam was excited about this target’s movements. He was heading the right way - into the leafy woods that muffled a victim’s screams; into the trees that blocked the city’s prying eyes; into the darkness; into the trap. Very soon the target was walking along the forest track near the edge of the tree line. He was stepping along at a good brisk pace. His back was slightly hunched against the cold, his hands were thrust deep in his coat pocket, and he blew out a trail of thick misty breaths behind him. With no time to lose Sam scrambled down the steeple and leapt to the ground, then began to pursue her quarry. She had spent decades perfecting that part of her game so it didn’t take her long to close the gap. She walked at a good clip along the exposed ways where people might see her, and dashed ahead at great tempo whenever she was immersed in shadow and out of sight. Five minutes later she reached the edge of the woods. She had got to that point with such swiftness that she’d shut down the distance and was almost on top of him. He was finished. However, she chose not to attack straight away. She could have done that quite easily if she had wanted to because he was deep enough in the woods not to be able to escape. But that would have been too easy. Sam only hunted once every month or two, so when the time came she really wanted to enjoy the moment… to prolong it as much as possible and extract the most satisfaction possible out of the sport. She used the dark tree shadows as cover to get around in from of him. Despite her cumbersome long dress she was very adept at moving quickly and quietly around on the forest floor. That was partly due to her very good night vision which allowed her to see into the darkest shadows, and partly due to her ability to leap over fallen trunks and bushes and then land on the other side with all the soft grace of a supple feline. Suddenly she stepped out of the darkness. Right front of him. The man jumped. ‘Shit!’ he exclaimed before he even had time to register what was happening. But he quickly regathered his wits and stared at the dark shape with wide, bewildered eyes… realising that the form before him was that of a woman. He blew out a deep breath which billowed into the misty air. Then he let out a little embarrassed laugh. He was relieved that it was only a woman standing there and not some dangerous predatory animal. Seeing the young figure in the long flowing dress he felt slightly ridiculous for having jumped so quickly ‘Where the hell did you come from?’ he asked. ‘The forest,’ offered Sam nonchalantly. ‘The forest?’ said the man. ‘Good heavens woman, you scared the daylights out of me!’ He ran his hands through his thick black hair as he tried to get his breath back after the fright. A half-hearted smile escaped his lips as if he were still struggling with the embarrassment. ‘What are you doing out here?’ he asked. Sam shrugged. ‘I had a little dispute on the home front,’ she said quite casually. It was a fabrication of course. Sam loved to play these little games for entertainment. ‘What about you?’ she asked. ‘Oh,’ said the man. ‘Working late… you know how it is. Busy day at the office. Just on my way back home.’ Sam smiled. She was surprised by his ability to lie so readily, especially given that half the neighbourhood had just seen the domestic quarrel he was involved in. Yet such a conniving mind amused her. Here was someone who enjoyed the same sense of creativity that she did. ‘And um… somebody waiting for you there?’ she probed. The man shrugged his shoulders slowly, and a roguish smile flickered across his lips. ‘Possibly,’ he answered. It was a rather ambiguous response, and one that didn’t make a lot of sense. Sam had the sneaking suspicion that he didn’t want to kill the potential of the moment by revealing his marital status. There was something about his smile that suggested he might be the sort of man who preferred to slip the gold ring into the little money pocket in his pants when things looked promising. He was game then. Oh yes, he was game. Sam could sense when a man was switching to predator mode… when he was beginning to push his inhibitions to the background in order to let his hunting instincts have a free hand. The men of the world who were born to manipulate women seemed to get a certain look in their face; an artful expression in the eyes and mouth that they couldn’t mask if they wanted to. And this fellow was the real deal. He had it. That suited her quite well actually. She didn’t mind if he wanted it to go that way, because as it happened she wanted to go that way too. Every now and then, if time and opportunity allowed, she was partial to adding a splash of unadulterated passion into the mix. Tonight was one of those nights. So if he was in one of those vigorous flesh-lusting moods then that would work for her too. It was quite a cynical thing to do of course – having passionate intercourse with the prey before chasing and killing him – but it appealed to some animalistic appetite within her. It made her feel pernicious; malevolent; nasty. And she relished that feeling. Some might argue that it wasn’t even that cruel a thing to do… the man was going to end up dead anyway, as they always did, so sending him off in such a fashion wasn’t that awful. ‘It’s quite cold out here,’ she said, biting her bottom lip softly. She took a step out of the tree shadows and the faint moonlight shone upon her countenance. The man could see her clearly now. He could also see more clearly the long flowing dress that covered her ankles but left her cleavage quite bare. ‘No wonder you’re cold,’ he snapped. ‘Look at what you’re wearing for goodness sake. You’ll catch your death of cold out here.’ He shook his head and tutted at her impropriety – at that revealing dress. Although at the same time he couldn’t help himself from casting his gaze down to look upon her milky white breasts. ‘What possessed you to go walking about in the dark in that?’ he asked. ‘I just…’ began Sam. Then she tried to look bashful. ‘No, you’re right. It is inappropriate. I am a silly girl.’ ‘It’s dangerous too,’ added the man chidingly, ‘for a young lady to walk unescorted in the evening in such a place. You should never head out after dark without a chaperone. Ever. Especially wearing something that’s so… well...’ He gestured towards her clothing but struggled to articulate the thought. Sam twisted her foot against the dirt path and gave him a doe eyed look. ‘How foolish of me. I guess I just wasn’t really thinking straight, what with the problems at home and all. I, um, I don’t suppose that you could… perhaps, if it’s not too much to ask… be my chaperone? Is that silly to ask? I’m only meaning for tonight.’ The man was taken aback and looked at her for a moment. His eyes lost their hunting gleam and took on a look of suspicion. It was a dull questioning look. ‘Um… I don’t know you’re looking for lady, but I’m probably not your guy.’ Sam cursed to herself. Damn, I was too fast. I was way too fast. He probably thinks I’m a floozy streetwalker now. She could see that his eyes were not longer directed at her pale breasts, but had lifted to stare her straight in the eyes. ‘No, please don’t misunderstand me,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s just… you were just saying how unsafe it is for a woman in my position, to walk around in the dark. And thinking about it, I’m inclined to agree. I can’t fight off a stranger. And now I ahh… well, I don’t feel much inclined to walk down the forest path myself.’ The man nodded and stepped closer. ‘Oh, I see. So you need a man to escort you?’ ‘Yes.’ ‘And you think I’m a good bet? You think I’m a safe candidate?’ He took a deep breath and blew it out so that it swirled in misty white clouds before Sam’s face. There was something slightly menacing about the gesture. ‘How, pray tell, can you be sure of that? I could be the dangerous guy.’ ‘I don’t think you are.’ ‘Don’t underestimate people young lady. Most men are wolves in sheep’s clothing. There’s a lot of bad people out there… folks aren’t always what they seem.’ ‘’I know,’ said Sam, trying not to let a smile escape her lips. ‘But I don’t think you’re one of them.’ ‘So you want me to walk you somewhere?’ ‘Well yes. That would be the gentlemanly thing to do.’ ‘And where to exactly? Back home?’ ‘No, I don’t want to go back there right now,’ said Sam. ‘Where then?’ ... - tailieumienphi.vn