Free Dying Bites: The Bloodhound Files-1 by DD Barant Page A

spotlight behind the camera that throws sharp-edged jet-black shadows on the snow. A chain-link barrier divides the cage in two; one side holds five snarling, barking huskies, their silvered fangs giving them an alien, otherworldly appearance. The other contains the victim.

    I freeze the image and study him. According to the file, he’s an African-American vampire named Abraham Porter. He looks like he’s about forty, balding, with broad shoulders and a bit of a paunch. The way he’s dressed suggests late fall in Maine, but he doesn’t seem cold. No breath puffs out of his mouth, either, adding to the illusion; I have to remind myself that I’m looking at a scene where the mercury was somewhere around fifty degrees below zero.

    The look on Porter’s face is just as savage as the dogs; his fangs are extended, his eyes bloodred. I wonder how a human being managed to get him into the cage—brute strength seems unlikely. Could a vampire be drugged? I didn’t think so, but I don’t know for sure. Maybe it was more magic.

    Which I’m really, really, beginning to loathe. I feel like I’ve been dropped into the last minute of a basketball game, told I have to play by a new set of rules, then had the ball passed to me while the coach promised he’d get that rule book right out to me, yes ma’am, by next week at the latest.

    I hit the play button again. A rope attached to the divider leads upward to a pulley on top of a pole, then down and off-camera. Someone pulls on it, raising the divider, and the dogs lunge forward and attack.

    The rest is fairly predictable, though Porter lasts longer than I would have expected; if he had more room to maneuver, he might have had a chance. As it is, once two of the Dying Bites – Bloodhound Files 01
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    dogs latch on to his throat and pull in opposite directions, it’s all over. It takes a third to actually sever the spine.

    And then the body just kind of falls apart, disintegrating into big chunks that crumble into smaller chunks, until the whole thing is dust. Instantaneous decomp, right down to the molecular level.

    First no ballistics, now no body. Frustrating, though I’m slightly mollified by having an actual recording of the murder.

    I watch the second one. Same kind of flat, featureless terrain, but this time it’s redbrown instead of white, desert lit by the last rays of the setting sun. Once again the murder weapon is center stage, the sarcophagus standing mostly upright—it’s on some kind of stand, leaning back at about a seventy-five-degree angle—with the door open to show the victim inside. He’s muscular, looks like he’s in his thirties, has a bushy red beard and curly hair. He seems groggy. It must be possible to drug a lycanthrope, though I’m guessing it’s not easy—their immunity to disease and ability to heal rapidly suggest their bodies’ defenses would resist any kind of chemical.

    The silver blades on the lid gleam sunset red, looking as though they’re already coated in blood. Once again, a pole, pulley, and rope arrangement leads to the door on one end, off-camera at the other. When it’s yanked, the door flips shut. There’s a wet, punching sound beneath the loud click of the lock, and then the vic screams. The killer’s timed it perfectly; the light from the horizon dims just as the lid slams closed, signaling that the sun is down and the full moon is now dominant. The scream turns into a howl halfway through, though the anguish in it remains the same.

    Then it’s just the silver maiden rocking back and forth on its stand, as the victim inside thrashes and howls. It goes on for a long time. Eventually, dark liquid starts to drip from the base of the casket. Blood always looks black in moonlight.

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    Both recordings were uploaded to a site called Televisionary, which seems to be this world’s version of YouTube. Viewers numbered in the thousands, at first—the