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  Across the street, emerging from the Catcher’s house onto the stair was a thin man, his considerable height curled to partially conceal a bloodied bundle that he sheltered like a child from the cursory view of onlookers. He had no need for that; the street was empty. All living things within a block’s radius had sensed her presence, either through insinuation or simple instinct, and the street was abandoned.

  She emerged from beneath a veil of shadow. Scant moonlight that bled through the clouds above shed wan light on the grotesquerie that was the Countess. The old man holding his cursed package didn’t have a chance.

  She moved like quicksilver.

  -13-

  The first sound , Walter thought in a daze, was like a snarling dog taking down an alleycat. But as the second sound, the sound of someone thrashing against his door, thundered through the house, he hopped from the floor, spilling the decanter of whiskey.

  He rushed to his foyer and froze before the door. Through the small window, he could see a shadow moving violently on the other side of the barrier. His heart crawled up his throat and he couldn’t pause to swallow. He realized his hand was on the knob to open the door, but refused to do so. His forearm wouldn’t respond, and something deep in his chest clinched up every time he steeled himself to do so.

  A greater thud came against the door, rattling the pane in the window frame, and Walter gasped as the next blow indeed broke the glass. It shattered into pieces across the floor of his entry.

  Sager’s final scream filled his ears.

  Walter’s skin jumped at the sound of George Sager in the clutches of death. He knew what was out there...not who, but what. This creature was no mere vamp like those he’d previously hunted. Elva was a queen of the night, and no mere man would stand in her path.

  “Sager!” Walter cried in a choked voice. Winning over his fear and out of concern for his friend, Walter yanked open the door.

  Elva perched on the edge of his upper front stair, a hunched vision of hungry undeath with her wings curled high above her. Her devilish form was silhouetted by the gaslight across the street, its glow dull against her porous, rubbery skin. She absorbed the shadows, so that even here, a mere few feet away, he could not fully discern her true shape. Her head was elongated, bald, with mere patches of hair clinging to the greenish flesh of the scalp. Her ears were pointed and grossly oversized, like a bat’s, and her eyes were black globes of hate, a red glow deep within them. Her vile fangs protruded from her jaws like inverted hooks dripping with Sager’s blood. She reached her talons into the soft flesh of his abdomen and ripped him open.

  Sager’s widening eyes caught Walter’s horrified gaze, imploring him for help even as he was eviscerated by the Countess’s spidery digits. Walter looked toward the floor, at his own feet, realizing that he was just inside of his threshold. Reeling, gasping for breath, gathering his wits, he realized that he was safe inside...not even she could enter uninvited. Or could she?

  He couldn’t be sure. Not with this vamp, not with the Countess, but he prayed fervently that she was like the others—limited in where they might trod without an invitation.

  Elva Walacova stood with Sager’s broken body dangling from one hand. She opened her jaws, hissing at Lusk, teeth and lips wet with blood. He could smell her rot breath and the odor of the dead lilting near her, like spoiled meat and grave dirt. The stench stirred in a whirlwind as she rose off her haunches, spread her giant bat wings, curled an arm around his black bag containing her spawn, and shot off into the sky. She let Sager’s ravaged body drop to the steps like any mere carcass. The vision was indelibly etched into his memory as she lighted away.

  Walter slammed closed the door and fell with his back against it, panting, hyperventilating. Control, he had to remind himself. Slow down. Breathe.

  The Ordine would be here soon. Of that he was certain, especially now that this had happened. And he was the Catcher. The Catcher could not be shaken.

  “Dear God,” Walter groaned. “Sager....” Walter leaned with one hand propped against the wall, head hanging low, eyes closed, swallowing bile when there was a swift knock on the door. Dazed, he turned to the sight of his Uncle Elias pushing open his front door and hurrying through with a slight limp. The old man clasped him firmly by the shoulders, holding him at arm’s length to have a look at him.

  “Thank God in Heaven you’re safe!” Elias said.

  Outside, there was a sudden flurry of activity as minions of the Ordine went about the business of cleaning up the mess left behind in the form of Sager’s mangled body. They couldn’t afford to have him identified. They swept him up like so much inconvenient debris. Walter made special note of that.

  Never forget your place, Elias had ingrained into him. We’re here for the greater good, not for self-glorification. At some time, you will have to offer yourself up for the cause. If you’re good enough, you’ll survive. If not, then you’ll die unceremoniously, and your body swept to an unmarked grave. Such was life in the Ordine, for the greater good. Under the will of the Lord. There were no heroes among them.

  “They should be done soon,” his uncle said quietly, with a hint of reverence.

  Walter nodded.

  “Let’s have a drink.” His uncle went for a fresh bottle on the table across the room.

  Out in the street, a driver’s whip-crack and a rattling carriage full of mutilated corpse marked the formal passing of George Sager.

  -14-

  New York City, 23 April 1891.

  Walter closed the door and placed his new bag on the rickety dresser that was positioned near the door. Feigning the need to check his appearance, he ran a hand through his hair and then fingered the heavy cross beneath his shirt. Looking in the mirror, he glanced toward the tall, narrow window covered only by a few shreds of tattered cheesecloth. She could be out there watching, he thought. She could be anywhere in the night.

  “You look quite the dapper gentleman, I’m sure,” the crone croaked, swigging whiskey from the bottle he’d given her on the walk here. “Why don’cha come over here and let me have a look for myself.” She patted the lumpy mattress that resembled a swayback mule.

  “I’ll just be a moment.” He opened his bag and without having to look, his hand went to the long, silver knife with the inlaid ivory handle.

  London. New York. It really mattered not where Elva chose to flee next. Was she fleeing? Or was she just bypassing the Ordine? It had taken the Ordine more than two years to trace her whereabouts. After all known drones of hers had been eliminated, and after poor George Sager’s demise, she had just vanished. Until two weeks ago.

  A new nose for the Ordine had it from a vamp in the know, that a character sounding a lot like Countess Elva Walacova had surfaced in New York City. Lusk had boarded a boat that afternoon.

  He would travel to the ends of the earth to get the monster. She had escaped with one of her bloody spawn, and God only knew how many more she had in the wombs of other women, incubating in the warmth of humanity.

  Walter unbuttoned his collar, letting it hang to one side. He slipped the knife up his sleeve and approached the unsuspecting woman, who stared into her bottle, randomly quoting Shakespeare.

  “They call me Old Shakespeare, you know, cuz I know a lot of his words.” She looked at him and smiled a crooked, drunken smile, holding up the bottle in a dizzy sway. “Who can control his fate? ’tis not so now. Be not afraid, though you do see me weapon’d; Here is my journey’s end, here is my butt.”

  “Hmm, MacBeth?”

  She laughed. “No! Othello! Who can control his fate?” She burst into a giddy fit of laughter and never saw the blade coming.

  He made quick work of her death, practiced as he was now, and of the incisions necessary to rid her of her passenger. When he got to her womb it was straining and pulsing to free itself from within.

  A reflexive shudder overcame him, and Walter reached for his cross, leaving a bloody handprint against his white shirt; he then chopped the screeching abo
mination from Carrie Brown. He pulled the purple mass from the gaping wound in her abdomen.

  While reaching for his bag, the tissues split and the screeching beast burst out. Walter jumped backward narrowly avoiding the airborne spring of the vile creature. Hands thrown up defensively, Walter had only a few seconds to contemplate his next move. The symbiont clung to him, chomping teeth coming dangerously close to his throat, before he slung the gore-smeared creature to the floor with a heavy crunch. Its neck snapped; its skin so soft, just a half-formed membrane, that the small misshapen skull ripped free. The baby vampire was decapitated. Its black head rolled beneath a paint-worn rocking chair, red eyes like soggy grapes twitching in its skull.

  Walter yanked the scarf from Carrie’s head, using it to pick up the monster’s head. Crossing the room, he put out the oil lamp on the dresser, and by the light of the streetlamp outside, rolled the remains of the butchered symbiont into a rag of a dress he found near the bed. Stuffing the unholy mess into his new bag, he picked up his dripping blade and wiped it against the bed covers, leaving crimson streaks behind.

  “Here is your journey’s end. May God have mercy on your soul,” Walter muttered solemnly, and wedged his bag beneath his arm. He found his way to the dimly lit street and walked away from the dirty waterfront.

  The moon was out. It hung full and heavy from the crisp black sky. If Elva hadn’t known he was in town, after this night she would. He had come for her and her unholy children. And he would keep coming. Over land or sea, mountains or jungles. He would go wherever necessary to rid the world of her abominations. One by one, until he had slain them all, or Elva had slain him. Because that was his job. That was what he did. Ordained by God and chosen by the Ordine. He was the Catcher.

  And that, poor Carrie, is my fate.

  A cool wind rose from the black water, and followed him into the heart of the city.

  ~

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  About the Authors

  Christopher Fulbright is a former reporter turned technical writer whose stories have received honorable mentions in The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror and Best Horror of the Year. Angeline Hawkes is a Bram Stoker-award nominated author with a B.A. in Composite English Language Arts. Individually and collaboratively they have been published by Dark Regions Press, Bad Moon Books, Chaosium, Delirium Books and many others. For more information, please visit their website at http://www.fulbrightandhawkes.com/.

  Other eBooks by Fulbright & Hawkes

  Then Comes the Child

  Blood Coven

  Black Mercy Falls

  Scavengers

  Sorrow Creek

  The Devil Behind Me*

  Elderwood Manor*

  *coming soon

  Links to buy these ebooks in all available formats can be found at

  http://fulbrightandhawkes.com/?page_id=2