Free Blood and Bullets by James R. Tuck Page A

worked. He wasn’t blinking and his mouth was hanging open slightly in awe. I told you it was amazing if you could keep up. Apparently Larson could. My eyes slipped closed so I could think some more, and I didn’t open them until I heard Kat give a quiet, but triumphant, “aha,” and stop typing.
    A picture filled the screen. It was a vampire. He looked pretty normal for a corpse. Vampires are always a bit off, especially the older they are. The vampire in them doesn’t quite get the human side, and when you throw in fashions through the ages ... Well, let’s just say they usually act and look a bit dramatic .
    This one had long, wavy black hair with sharply trimmed sideburns that met across his face into a thick, Fu Manchu-style moustache and a soul patch. Pale, he had a heavy brow and a sharp nose. Dark eyes rimmed in red sunk over sharp cheekbones, one of which had a strange star-shaped scar on it. He must have gotten the scar before becoming a vampire, or he had been wounded with a blessed object.
    Vampires can close any wounds, unless they were caused by something holy. The picture was taken from the waist up. He looked like he was slender, but broad of shoulder, and dressed in a high-dollar pinstripe suit. Admittedly, he was a good-looking corpse. I didn’t recognize him, but he looked like a player.
    Kat’s voice cut across the room, clear and concise. “Gregorios, no surname. Owns a vampire dance club downtown called Helletog. That’s his legitimate business. Illegal businesses include several vampire bordellos tucked away in different parts of the city. They also double as distribution centers for dealing crack and finding victims.” She clicked some more. “Supposedly over six hundred years old, and with the largest kiss in the city. He normally keeps a pretty high profile and is a minor celebrity in the Goth and fetish scenes, but very recently has dropped out of sight, only making minimal appearances at his club.”
    This bloodsucker fit the bill. A big player, but laying low. It was as good a place to start as any. “Send the addresses to my phone and me and Larson here will go knocking and see if we can find this asshole and figure out what he knows.”
    Larson looked at me sharply, eyes wide. “Why am I going?”
    I held up my hand to stop him from speaking. “You don’t get a choice on this either, pal. You are in this and I want to know why. They used you to get me in a trap, so you are stuck with this until the end.” I waved my hand in a flourish as I stood up. “Besides, you wanted to be a vampire hunter. Here’s your chance to see how it’s done.”
    I knew he had probably changed his mind about being a vampire hunter after the attack earlier. Seeing the monsters in action will do that. They are not nearly as horrible in theory as they are in real life. Again, fiction paints vampires as cool and sexy. In real life, they are vicious, deadly creatures and we are their food. I was taking Larson with me to learn more about why he was involved, but I also wanted to turn him away from wanting to hunt monsters. He wasn’t up to the job.
    Hell, I am a little more than human and some days I’m not up to the job. Going down this path, I am going to die. I have made peace with that, but that didn’t mean I was going to just let him follow the same path to the same end.
    I mean, I’m an asshole, but I’m not a fucking asshole.

6
    We were in the Comet cruising down Interstate 75 heading into the city of Atlanta. That’s where Helletog was. Here in the South you do a lot of driving. It’s like the city is where you go to do certain things, but most of us live outside of it in the suburbs. There is space in the South for us to spread out and we take advantage of that. We have MARTA—which is public transport consisting of a few trains and buses—but there is no true subway in Atlanta, and if