Free Blood Lust: A Supernatural Horror by JE Gurley Page A

to its groin even less. Sensing the hopelessness of fighting, she had tried to run but the creature slammed into her back, sending her careening into the wall with enough force to knock her breath less . Fiery pain quickly followed as the creature sliced into her arm with razor sharp talons in its attempt to drag her through the shattered balcony door. Clinging to the curtains and kicking at him had delayed him only a few seconds. Her damaged arm could not retain its grip.
    A loud knock at the door and a yell by the doorman who ogled her suggestively each time she passed through the lobby startled the creature. She tried to scream but her face was pressed too tightly against the creature’s clammy skin. Then she was airborne. She looked down in abject horror at the city below her fearing that the creature would release her from its iron grip to plummet hundreds of feet to the ground. She closed her eyes for the dizzying ride above rooftops, opening them only when the creature veered sharply to clear the steeple of a church. She opened them again when the creature dropped her roughly on a cold, wet stone floor, but almost immediately lost consciousness.
    Now, she lay in a dark, filthy room filled with the stench of death surrounding her. She tried to turn her head slightly and recognized that she was in an old chapel. Her blood suddenly went cold. She knew the one. She had seen it many times from her balcony. She had also seen it recently on the news. She was in the church where they had found the dead girls. She could even make out strips of crime scene tape strung from stone columns. Now the death odor frightened her. She knew what it was. It was no longer just an inconvenience but a threat. It could be her future. She thought it ironic that the only time she had been to church in many years a vampire had brought her.
    For vampire it was, not the Bela Lugosi-type vampire in a dark suit with hypnotic gaze, but a winged gray creature resembling a gargoyle born in the depths of hell. It had licked at the blood pouring from the wound in her right arm, the long sinuous tongue rough and slimy against her skin. The pain had been horrendous until some sedative in the saliva had deadened the arm. She had expected to die quickly. She had read about the other bodies found in the same church, drained of blood, but to her amazement , the creature had retreated to its perch near the roof and remained there. There was no chance of escape. Every time she moved , the creature reacted with a shrill call .
    At times in her delirium, she longed for death. Her entire life had been one long slow attempted suicide. Born rich, pampered and left on her own, she had quickly developed a disdain for her family and their semblance of normalcy. She had many supplicants but no friends, no one in which to confide her fears or to reel in her extremes. She had lived an empty life, void of love or hope. Drugs, sex and outrage had been her revenge.
    Then, at other times as she lay there in the wet and filth and the stench, she prayed for just one more chance. She clung to life tooth and nail, daring to hope that the fact she was still alive meant something. She grew angry, would have attacked her tormentor with her bare hands if it had come close enough, but the creature simply waited and watched . She had no choice but to wait with it.

 
     
     
     
     
     
     
    6
     
    Just after ten p.m. I once again stood before the walls of the monastery, eager to find the bastard responsible for the girls’ deaths. We had parked our vehicles across the street out of sight . I figured six uniforms would be sufficient to form a perimeter. I did n’t want to discourage our killer, just keep an eye on him. We would have no m oon until it rose at four a.m. and the inside of the old church would be as dark as the inside of a bank vault. Each of us carried flashlights but dared not use them. I had my police issue .45 and Lew his trusty .38. The uniforms were equipped with