By the time I got to the Cowgate, one of the victims was already dead, his decapitated body slung into the waiting Transit van. His two male companions had been captured and pinned against the wall at the back of the Snake-Pit club. The taller of the two, a boy who didn’t look old enough to be out of school let alone out on the tiles, began to plead for his life.
The vampire holding him growled, trailing a taloned claw across the boy’s neck turning the flow of words into blood. The wound was not deep enough to kill, but it confirmed that these three monsters were out of control. On the bright side, it looked like the boy was going to get the chance to paint the town red after all.
All of the vampires were blond, female and bore a striking resemblance to Morgana their Queen, so my source had been correct in that respect at least. The erstwhile driver of the van had abandoned her post at the wheel and was, from the sound of cracking bones, worrying the corpse while the other two played with their food.
With a cursed blade in each hand I crept around to the open doors at the back of the vehicle, breath pluming in the arctic night air. I needn’t have bothered with stealth because the corpse-botherer was too busy pulling the entrails out of the belly like so many linked sausages, snarls of appetite muffled by the corpse’s head which it gripped in its teeth.
The coppery tang of blood was strong and the Deadlights, that sixth sense I’d been born with, gift and nightmare in equal parts was eager to be free. It invaded the memories and thoughts of dead and living alike without fear or favour, consuming a portion of whatever it touched. And, like the parasite that I was, that meant I did too.
It was for that very reason that the Deadlights were out of luck tonight because I didn’t fancy chowing down on vampire. That left only good, old-fashioned brute force.
“Oi,” I said as though talking to a bothersome dog who had been rooting in the bins.
There was a beat of silence before she turned towards me, blood-soaked blond hair black in the sodium lights, teeth buried in the tender flesh of the corpses cheek. She shook her head, the flesh gave way and the head dropped with a thunk onto the floor. She flew for me, teeth distended and snapping. I brought both daggers up as though making an offering and drove them deep into her heart. Stakes were for the movies and those foolish enough to set store by such things. Like all good arguments, all you needed was a point and enough wit to ram it home.
At least that was the theory…