"A desperate disease requires a dangerous remedy."

GUY FAWKES
1605

My question to my kindred was simple. The disbelief coloring my voice with a tinge of sarcasm made them flinch as one. Reformed cattle, all of them, they looked at me as I suppressed a disgusted snort. "This is the man you cannot get rid of?" I asked incredulously.

Dozens of eyes peered back at me from blank faces, not comprehending a whit of my words. Apparently, such higher functions as thinking were beyond these idiots huddled shivering…though it wasn’t that cold in the dead of night. Again, we looked through the thick glass matted with wire mesh so heavy that it scarce admitted light. Inside the one story ranch home on the edge of Goshen, we observed the tall man they called Hunter. That was a joke; we were the hunters, not he. The tall, thin man inside shaved his long face with a straight razor… but not in the bathroom mirror. He stared out into the night at the faces of over two-dozen vampires riveted like obedient dogs at their master’s heels. Imparting a sly wink, the Hunter tilted his head back, let a mane of kinky brown hair hang, and shaved his neck. With an abrupt swipe, he shook off the foam, rinsed the blade, and started on the other side of his neck. A tiny spot of blood arose to the surface of Hunter’s rough skin.

"Get back," I admonished the two younger boys, faces pressed to the glass, tongues licking the mesh. It was disgusting, really, their lack of composure at the sight of blood, and they shrank back at my command. "You are embarrassing the race." Shameful. The Hunter played them like fiddles or, mayhap the term should be suckers. Standing there under radiant florescent light he made certain they watched. His manner surprised me, I mused as he licked the razor without so much as a scratch to the tongue. "You call me from the Netherlands for this?"

I spoke harshly to these young vampires in Goshen, Iowa, but they needed to learn. They would be ten years old for a very long time, and what wisdom was not gleaned fast in this savage world could be their downfall. While it isn’t my fault this backwater burg was entirely converted to vampirism, (instead the mad delusions of some other immortal come a-visiting) it was one of my duties to step in and make sure they got on establishing their sector. It wasn’t, however, one of my jobs to rid the community of pesky humans still present in our new Dark Age. These locals should be bright enough to use them as cattle. Instinct alone does not give a being an advantage; there must be a function of intelligence there to endure.

"He mocks us! Look!" The balding, middle-aged former Sheriff of Goshen spat, finger stabbing at the protected glass. The paleness of the Sheriff’s skin just made his jellyrolls of fat more appalling in the dim light.

My arms folded and my high forehead likely bore wrinkles of frustration. The man Hunter possessed no fear in his green eyes. Surely, he could see I was different from these dolts. No trepidation appeared as he observed me with those flat green depths. Ha! I would just have to put terror in there instead of that amused malevolence . . . though it likely wouldn’t be worth my time. These stupid dogs couldn’t tell their noses from their elbows. "If this were olden times of yore I could see your fear of him," I started to say. "A powerfully built, well armed man of nature. What is not to be cautious of?" My eyes narrowed at the vampires as the Hunter mopped his neck with a towel, then combed his long goatee. He winked at me in an exaggerated manner that shrunk up the entire left side of his face. It occurred to me then that Hunter read my lips.

A girl of twenty years, golden of hair and opening a mouth full of jagged teeth told me, "He’s well armed! You think we haven’t tried to get him?" her voice grated on my ears like rough pebbles on glass, and I winced. She needed to learnrespect for her elders.

The Hunter left the bathroom and gestured for us to follow him. Astounded at his gall I followed the herd to the next window. Here, behind bars and thick glass, the Hunter adorned a snug outfit, not unlike a swimmer’s wetsuit. This material was a heavy web of some sort like thin chain mail. As he donned jeans and boots, I could hear the Hunter whistling a tune lightly, happily, with the concern of a child watching a butterfly float past on a warm day. "The house is impregnable even with your combined strength?"

An elderly man, bald, hawk nosed, and clad in a faded WAL-MART uniform stammered through drooling lips, "The sonofabitch has porch lights converted to sunlamps! He’s a wily bastard, he is!" The Wal-martian subsided at my glance.

I shook my head from side to side, assessing the walls of the cozy study behind the Hunter. On the long wall mounted on wooden placards were dozens of human heads. Mostly, they were skulls, but a few bore strips of dried flesh clinging to existence. "He has to sleep sometime," I shamed them.

"You don’t get it!" the sheriff shouted and waved at the sky as if it would have answers. "It’s after sundown, Maurice! That Hunter never comes out to hunt for us in the day!"

My jaw dropped but I spoke fast to insure they didn’t catch my astonishment. This was something new . . . a Hunter with the audacity and pure insanity to confront so powerful an opponent on their own turf? It was madness! Any true vampire would have picked him up and snapped him like a dry stick. I hoped to attribute their failure to do so on their incompetence, but somehow that didn’t ring true. Hunters were strictly creatures of daytime, just as vampires were those of the shadows. "He hunts you at night?!"

They all nodded and a little girl of five or six years removed her finger from her mouth to say, "When he killed my poppa he said it was more sporting that way." She looked away with a pain unbefitting her bronze eyes.

The Hunter pulled on a red flannel shirt to complete his redneck uniform, waved with a jaunty smile and walked over to a wall of trophies. I could perceive a series of gun cases; some held rifles and others crossbows. Many Bowie knifes and blades were mounted on the inner doors of the hutches as well. "A hard case then. Was his family killed and added amongst you?" Perhaps that would explain his suicidal methods. A sinking feeling crept into my body as I looked at them. Logic’s confines had very little place in this confrontation.

Befuddled, the vampires shrugged. Their communal thinking was hardly appropriate for a solitary species. The Sheriff spoke up and said, "No, Maurice, he was a widower long before the world fell to us."

"What is that?" I asked, pointing to a curio cabinet under the series of mounted skulls. "They look like canning jars," My face drooped as I stared at the obese Sheriff. He shrank back, trying to buck up his courage. "What’s in them?" I questioned, my impatience rising.

The Sheriff stated, "Fingers."

"Pardon me?"

He held up his left hand and I noticed that the pinkie finger was absent. I cursed myself for my lack of observation. "Maurice, he could’ve had me. He’s playing with us! He collects the fingers from those of us he doesn’t kill…but eventually he does! It’s like his promise. No matter how hard the ones he marks can hide, Hunter finds them!"

I rubbed my bare chin as the Hunter took up a repeating rifle, slung it over his shoulder, and then brandished a small Uzi. The vampires around me moved away from the house in a milling, disorganized crowd. "Run! He’s coming out!" one of them bleated.

"Come now!" I admonished them. "He has you all that fearful?" Nevertheless, they all fled. "A bullet won't harm us!"

The Sheriff shouted to me, "Get goin’ Maurice, or you will see what his bullets do!"

I receded from the building as a red sunlamp bathed the porch. Flinching from the light, I withdrew into his gravel lane, watching as the door opened. The ranch sat at the outskirts of Goshen, so he would have a dangerous trip into town. "Yet he fears it not," I murmured as the lights flicked off and he stepped free of the home.

Hunter moved like a typical southerner with a swagger easy to spot, footsteps loud and uncaring. His presence screamed I am here! He walked away from his home, pressed a key chain back in the direction of his home and the ranch was bathed in solar lights.

"You fools ever think of cutting his power?" I shouted out as the sheriff hid behind a tree, face even whiter in terror.

"We did!" The Sheriff gibbered. "Hunter has a generator he supplies every night!" The sheriff stuck his head out and the expression glowed with horror. "Look out, Maurice!"

I saw the Hunter approach and he saw me. I felt the hair on the back of my neck rise in trepidation, and I bared my teeth instinctively. Feeling the power emanating from him self, the Hunter didn’t acknowledge my age and experience. With a sadistic smile, he turned from me and stared with a hypnotic insanity at the Sheriff. I was frozen, watching him . . . hunt. I’ve always possessed a great respect for predators, as I’m one myself. He slung down the repeater from his shoulder, tugged on the brim of his dark baseball cap and said, "Evenin’ slick. Nice to see ya showed up from afar!" The Hunter aimed at the tree the Sheriff hid behind and he shouted, "BOOOOOO!"

The Sheriff shook so he stumbled from hiding. Hunter shot him through the left shoulder and held up. I thought he would fire my way next but Hunter ignored me. He allowed the Sheriff to run a few paces before shooting him in the buttocks. Confused by this at first, I soon saw the fruit of his labors. The fat Sheriff fell, convulsing wild and acting like a trout on land. I cocked my head to one side in a morbid curiosity I couldn’t dismiss. No blood arose but gray bubbles and smoke…

Unconcerned with me and overconfident to the core, the Hunter pivoted, resting the butt of the rifle on his hip. The weapon, aimed at the stars, smelling different than any discharge I’d ever known. He regarded me lightly, saying, "Vitamin D, Chief. Not good for the complexion." When I advanced the barrel dropped and aimed into my face. His own features were grave, and I beheld a look of minor reluctance. This puzzled me, for his ruthlessness seemed seamless. "Ya came a long way, Chief. Ya really wanna be dust in Iowa?"

"You seem determined to be dead here." I said, voice low. My hands flexed and I felt the bones moving over themselves smoothly.

The Hunter winked yet again. "Can’t kill someone who died in here a long time ago." He patted his heart and ground his jaw. The arrogant smirk, hooded by his heavy mustache, transformed into a frown.

"So you have a death wish? Splendid!" I said kindly and attacked him, bloodlust rising in my mind like a crimson tide. Power surged, and I knew that it was a duel to the death, his or mine . . . we wouldn’t both survive.

The Hunter fired, but my body became mist…not an ability I can deploy very often, but it made him wonder when I vanished and reconstituted near the Sheriff. I swung a leg to connect with the Hunter’s belly, but the tall man performed a cartwheel and came up with his gun aimed at me again. The smile was back and the gun lowered. He fired again into the convulsing, foaming body of the Sheriff point blank, an execution. "That’s what you get for being such a rotten Sheriff!" The Hunter barked at the vampire at my feet, tendons popping out along his neck. "Protect and serve my achin’ ass! You deserve no better." He said this to the dying vampire, but his eyes were focused someplace beyond it all.

Bewildered that the Hunter didn’t seem concerned that I was even there, I leapt high in the air to kick him in the head, calling upon fight training given to me many years ago. Again, he rolled to the ground and eluded me without so much as a glance my way. Assuming this man a trained soldier at one time by his moves, I saluted him mockingly, disconcerted. Nevertheless, this made the maddening rage in me rise further and choke me with its scarlet tendrils of burning want. "Such hatred you have inside. A holy warrior for the cross are you?"

Hunter chuckled as I touched down. He never fired and I felt confident he didn’t plan to kill me…that night. I wouldn’t be played with! "Barkin’ up the wrong paradigm there, sparky. I’m an atheist. I never agreed with all that pussy unity crap. Survival of the fittest, my motto!"

Raising an eyebrow at his irony, I told him, "Yet immortals are those who are fittest in nature."

His smile never fading he told me, "Sez you. Who wants to live forever?"

I blinked and said, "I…"

"I’m happy for ya, Chief. Know what? Ya got me confused with someone who even gives a shit!"

I tried to strike him down or seize the throat, yet Hunter evaded me with impossible swiftness. Swiveling his legs, Hunter seemed constructed of rubber in his motions, fluid and impossible to grasp. Growling, I lashed at him like a cat, yet he sidestepped me with an evil chuckle. His feet set firm and I shouted in my frustration, "You cannot kill us all!"

"Who said I wanted to?" he laughed and danced away, nearing the paved road. I shifted my weight in a feint, but he didn’t buy it. He was good . . . perhaps better than I was. Quickly, I quelled my doubts so they didn’t intrude upon my judgment. "Ya over-estimate my ambition!"

I spread my arms and offered my chest. Confident that I contained at least one more dematerialization in me, I said, "Shoot me then!"

The Hunter shrugged, that odd reluctance back. "Naw, chief. That ain’t how it works. Yer fish in a barrel and I’m ‘bout ready to cast."

My ego stepped up and I laughed. "I’m older by centuries than these incompetent insects that you have been going after, and far more powerful. Do you really think you can hurt me? Fence with my mind!"

With an expression telling me just how unimpressed he was by my resume, the Hunter said, "I’ll make you mine in my own time, Chief. I got a few punks to get tonight. Ya can follow me and try to kill me, sweet thing. The Sheriff there tried that shit on me and he lost his fingers. Ya can too!"

I stared at this brash man with a slight respect for his insane disregard of suicidal words. I’ve always been respected over the hundreds of years of my life, and this squabble from that pattern threw me off balance. Of course, those who hadn’t respected me I killed out of hand…never to arise, but this was different.

Hunter jogged into the night. I never went after him, for somehow deep inside I knew that it was hopeless, at least at that moment.

The Sheriff melted away; only an outline of the chubby man drizzled away in the murky night and soon would be forgotten. Hunter never wanted this man’s head; I concluded…he desired the Sheriff dead forever.

Turning to the ranch house, I decided to walk back to the bathroom window. A dozen of them couldn’t tear loose the frame of wire…perhaps I could. When I touched the glass, it was cool to the touch, not heated by the sun lamps. Wary, I walked the perimeter, searching for some sort of crack that I could pry into. That was when I found the septic tank, or rather the pipe to the septic tank, partially uncovered. Around the edge was a tiny crack that Hunter failed to insulate against the cold, as it was summer. With a wild grin, though I knew that it would be disgusting, I summoned again a dematerialization.

The skill is intensely problematical to master, and only those who have worked doubly hard at it have actually gotten it right. I was one of those rabid individuals who when committed to a task perfected it. Losing my shape, I feeling energy draining in loads, but I still grinned mentally entering through the crack. Slowly, I crept to the basement where it ran up to the toilet.

That one flaw, a tiny hole in the wall that ran to the basement allowed me in. Nothing is perfect, much less a building. When I regained my shape, I was very hungry, but I controlled the pangs with a force of will that left me panting. Walking up the rickety wooden stairs, there was no odor of rodents whatsoever. I put a hand to the bronze knob on the door before me, expecting a sunlamp to light up or something akin to that. Nothing happened. The door opened easy, not even locked. His confidence appalled me that he would have all his defenses on the outside, and none inside.

The house was covered in a blackness that I could see perfectly well in. I looked along the clean-cut interior, how neat it was, unlike a bachelor pad. Staring at the pictures on the wall, I was sickened by the stench of old fear that permeated the house. In the photos, there was a sweet little girl, a handsome boy sitting beside a beautiful woman…and the Hunter. His family. I shivered and entered the neat living room. The room, normal and neat, wasn’t fitting for a person who lived in a realm controlled by vampires. There was the kitchen, and from it wafted the faint scent of human blood. I couldn’t help it, drawn inexorably by my hunger in there.

I opened the cabinets, looking for clues, but they were empty. There was a single spider sitting forlornly on one shelf, and I drew my brows together.

"Curiouser and curiouser." I murmured to myself.

Facing the refrigerator, I opened it, ignoring the sticking it made. The first thing that caught my nose was the overwhelming scent of preservatives. Formaldehyde and the unmistakable presence of vinegar touched my senses. I stared at the fingers floating in one giant glass jar, and at the bloated head of a woman on another shelf also under glass. Her jaws gaped at a terrible angle hinting at dislocation. Bits of her hair floated from her forehead different from the two smaller heads in tiny jars on the top shelf. The blackened skin peeled and the scent was horrific. Choking down bile, I looked at the flash of gold that lay on the bottom of the finger jar--a wedding band! With a quiver of utmost disgust, I started to close the door, satisfied. I paused for something else caught my eye, in the back. Bottles, dark brown bottles were rowed up like toy soldiers ready for Armageddon. I snatched one up.

It was corked, and condensation covered its cool exterior. I wiggled it about, expecting wine to foam over. Instead, a familiar and much beloved odor came to my nose, making my mouth water. Blood, thick and viscous, lay swirling in its bottom. Then it all came clear to me, all the puzzle pieces fell together. With a short, acidic laugh, I took a swig of the stuff. It burned down my throat like good whiskey, and I closed my eyes in rapture. Then a small sound touched my ears. I turned, and my hand convulsed on the glass, nearly causing it to implode.

The Hunter grinned from across the kitchen, but this time his mouth and mustache was full of crimson.

"Come now, Jack. That’s not nice, comin’ into a man’s house and taking his food."

"You are one of us," I exclaimed as I placed the bottle on the counter. "Yet you hunt and kill us like animals! Use us as sport, would you? Stop this madness!"

Laughter filled the house, a mad chuckle that sent shivers as its herald. "Ya don’t get it do ya?"

"Why do you do it?" I asked, gesturing at the heads of his wife and daughter.

The Hunter shrugged, non-plussed. "What do you think I was before this happened, Chief? Why do I kill my own kind? Why does any man do it? I’m diagnosed a homicidal maniac, ya jackass! Only thing is, I’m the only one who is still sane!"

His eyes glinted with an insanity reached for by the darkest of souls in the bowels of humanity. Hunter was an entity even a vampire would fear…and not because of his physical strength but for the foul darkness in his soul.

"That is hardly the truth, my good man. No man in all of Europe is as mad as you. For evidence, you dare to come at me unarmed?"

He grinned, flashing fangs. "Like the day I was borned."

I walked up to him, and he stopped smiling, for I knew in my heart that something must be done about this rabid thing. However, I locked eyes on him, and what ensued was a battle of wills. I pushed at him with my mind, and Hunter returned the volley, but his was a disordered mind, chaotic. He couldn’t focus on my attack as I was doing so with a single-minded intensity. Light danced in his eyes, and his teeth pulled back in a feral snarl. Nevertheless, with every slip he made in his own mind, I took a step closer, until I stood bare inches away from him. Putting a single finger to his forehead, I looked into his eyes. "Mine enemy is not mine enemy, for he is my friend."

I wasn’t a Prince among vampires for nothing. No wonder the others couldn’t mentally overwhelm him--it took everything I had to do so. My hands closed lovingly around his throat, my fingers pushed in, through the flesh. Cool immortal ichor flowed over my fingers, and his mouth gaped, eyes wide. The Hunter did nothing to stop me, for I knew that he desired oblivion, thus releasing him from the bars of psychosis imprisoning his brain. I’m an old-fashioned immortal, understandably, and fisticuffs aren’t really my style. Paralyzing him with my brain was stylish, yet the grisly work remained.

There are only a few ways to kill an immortal, and his flesh was so terse. Gazing down past bloodstained hands, my eyes focused on one of the giant Bowie knives in the Hunter’s belt. I grabbed its leathery handle and my skin prickled.

I could sense him still wanting my destiny to join his as I slid the thick knife under his ribs. The dark light in his eyes ebbed away. Hunter’s expression—a type of horrible wonder, caused me to close my eyes in silent awe, I flipped my wrists in a circle and destroyed his heart. After Hunter fell, spewing his life onto the linoleum, I turned off the lights for the outside world. Leaving the corpse of the dead lunatic, I closed the door behind me tenderly. Hunter found what he searched for at last, I pondered.

Outside, I looked at the survivors of Goshen creeping into view from the shadows and judged them lucky. The explanation I gave was brief yet educational.

"He was one of us?" one of the young girls exclaimed in response to my words concerning Hunter. "He killed so many of us? Why?"

Crushing the heart in my hands, I felt the warm touch of the Hunter again. I wouldn’t forget this thing. "There are many things that none of us will ever understand. The world is full of the insane, and unfortunately, to be near the fate of gods is to walk that fine line even more closely."

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