I’ve been hunting vampires for six years now and I used to think I was pretty good at it. Then again if you’re a trained killer like me, vampires aren’t all that different from anything else.

​

There’s a lot of misconceptions about them. People seem to think they’ve got magical powers or can only be killed in certain ways. Sunlight, a stake to the heart, stuff like that. None of it is necessarily true. Sunlight doesn’t actually do much to them. It doesn’t burn their skin or make them weaker. Their eyes are more attuned to low light conditions, so the only thing it does is make it ever so slightly harder for them to see. Garlic doesn’t do anything either. They’re a little more sensitive to smell I guess, but they’re no more put off by garlic than anyone else.

​

Oh and crosses? Don’t even bother. The only reason people think vampires are afraid of crosses, is because most of the groups who’ve hunted them throughout history were Catholic. They don’t actually have any affect on them. If you throw up a cross at a vampire, the only thing that’ll do is buy you a few seconds as your soon to be killer laughs in your face.

​

So then, how do you kill a vampire?

​

However the hell you want.

​

Sure, a lot of the old myths aren’t true. But that’s a two way street. Vampires can’t turn into bats, they can’t hypnotize you, fly or anything like that. Not naturally, anyways. There’s a few out there who’ve figured out how to use magic to make themselves even stronger but for most vampires the only leg they have up on you and me is that they’re a little bit stronger, a little bit faster and they don’t age. Other than that, you can kill them just as easily as you can kill anything else. Shoot it in the head, slit its throat, put a stake through its heart if you really want to. It doesn’t matter how you do it, so long as you confirm the kill.

​

Me personally? I’m simple. I put two bullets in their head and call it a day. That’s more than enough for your average vampire. You pop them in the head, and call it a day. Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

It’s the ones who use magic you should be afraid of… And even then, I’d killed a few of those too. They were tricky but they always slipped up. Always.

​

I didn’t think that the Maenad would be any different…

​

I got the call from Edward Kelley about three days ago. He didn’t say much, only that something big was going down in San Francisco. The way he talked about it, it sounded like an all hands on deck type situation. The organization I work for has been hunting things like this for a very, very long time. They don’t put out calls like this for just anyone. I knew this wasn’t something I could ignore. So, I told Kelley I’d be in San Fran within the next day or so and I kept my word. Sure enough, the day after I’d arrived he sent me an email with a location and a time.

​

The location turned out to be the conference room of a fairly inexpensive hotel just outside of town. When I got there on the day of the meeting, there were already five other guys present, not including Kelley himself. They were already seated. A couple of them were people I only knew by their last names. It wasn’t good business to know too much besides that. The rest were strangers.

​

Kelley stood at the head of the table, waiting for me to close the door before he spoke.

“Mr. Moore. I’m glad you could join us.” He said, voice low and grave. I gave him a polite nod before taking an empty seat between the two men I recognized. One of them, Mr. Boyer returned my nod. The other one, Mr. Streeter barely even acknowledged me.

​

“Gentlemen, thank you for joining me here today.” Kelley began, “I understand I may have called some of you from a considerable distance away, but considering our target, I thought it necessary to have some of the best working on this with me. This one here is the real deal. Not one of those mosquitos you’ll find picking up their prey a bar.”

Kelley surveyed us as he spoke. The man looked like a grumpy brick wall on the best of days, but as he inspected us, I understood the solemn urgency in his gaze. If this vampire was half as bad as he said, then he probably needed to be sure he was bringing the right people.

​

“We’ll need to be clever with this one. She and her sisters were the ones behind the Venice massacre back in the 1650s. She’s dangerous, she’s cunning and she won’t go quietly.”

“We’re dealing with a Venetian?” Boyer asked, “You’re talking about the Di Cesare’s, right? They’re still alive?”

​

“Very much so.” Kelley replied, “They pop on and off our radar, but they’re rarely ever in a place where we can get to them. In four hundred years, we’ve only ever managed to kill one. One. Out of thirteen. Can’t say it’s much of a track record. But now we’ve got ourselves a rare opportunity, and Grandmaster Ivory gave us the marching orders himself. God willing, we’ll be able to strike another one off the list tonight.”

“Which one is it exactly?” I asked, “What exactly should we expect to be up against?”

​

“They call her Eris the Maenad. She’s something of a follower of Dionysus, in case the name didn’t tip you off. Can’t say we’ve got a hell of a lot of intel on her, so be prepared for anything. Before they became vampires, most of the Venetians were part of a coven of witches, and they’ve just grown smarter over the centuries. Call it a hunch but my gut tells me we’re gonna need a little more than a simple bullet to the head for her.”

“Not a problem.” One of the others said, “All we need to know is where she’ll be.”

Kelley shot the man a death glare before he started speaking again.

“As of tomorrow night, she’ll be at a club called the Twelve Underground. That’ll be our window.”

​

The Twelve Underground. I’d passed by it on my previous visits to San Francisco although I’d never been inside. That kind of thing wasn’t really my scene, but I’d seen the advertisements for it. It wasn’t much more than a seedy bar that mostly hosted no name bands, and bands that usually opened for actual headliners. Honestly, it probably wasn’t a bad place to find a vampire, but it was an even better place to find a maenad.

​

“I’m gonna assume we’ve got a plan?” Boyer asked. He sat comfortably beside me, sounding more curious than concerned, “A witch that old is probably using some sort of protection spell.”

“I thought it was safe to assume so.” Kelley said, before looking towards Streeter near the end of the table, “Which is why I had Mr. Streeter here do a little bit of prep work. Mr. Streeter?”

​

“There’s a charity show on at the Twelve Underground tomorrow night,” Streeter said. “At around 11, there will be a break as the first band finishes their set and the second one sets up. During that time, she’ll be on stage promoting their sponsor and she’ll be vulnerable. Given her experience, it’s likely she’ll be using an attribution spell. Shoot or stab her, and the wound appears on you instead. Since we don’t know where on her body the rune might be carved, the safest bet is to avoid harming her directly. So, I’ve taken the liberty of arranging for a little ‘surprise’ to be placed underneath the stage before she gets on there. We’ll be able to detonate it remotely.”

​

“And blow the bitch to hell…” Kelley finished, “Now I’m gonna be righteously paranoid and assume that’s not going to kill her outright. But it should at least wound her enough so we can find a way to finish the job. And in case anything goes wrong, you all remember your training. Much as I’d rather not fight something like this out in the open, at least we’ll have a better chance as a group.”

“What about the collateral?” One of the others asked, “There’ll be other people in that club.”

​

All eyes shifted to him.

“Son, this is a high value target. Do you have any idea how dangerous the Di Cesare’s are?” Kelley asked, “They’ve been loose for four hundred years and they’ve left entire nations of corpses in their wake. Do you think they give half a shit about collateral? Because I can assure you, they don’t. If we fail here, then we won’t get another chance. Not only will she rip us limb from bloody limb, she’ll be in the wind for the next few centuries. We know where she’ll be. We have her here and now. So to answer your question, I don’t give a shit about the collateral. The collateral is necessary. now are you gonna pull up your frilly fucking panties, be a man and do the job that needs to be done, Mr. Thompson or are you gonna whine to me about collateral damage?”

​

I saw Thompson recoil a little at what Kelley said, but he didn’t utter another word of protest. Satisfied, Kelley returned his attention to us.

“Now, do we have any other questions? Any other concerns?”

Nobody else spoke.

​

“Good. When the explosive detonates, I want you all armed. Assuming she’s still alive, move to subdue but don’t go for a killshot. Not unless we’ve confirmed there’s no attribution spell active. Once she’s subdued, we move her out of the building and onto the street. We’ll be taking her to a designated meeting place on the east end where we’ll be able to safely burn her. Are we clear?”

​

Some of the others nodded, as did I. Considering the reputation the Venetians had, the plan did sound fairly solid. Hell, it almost sounded easy… Kelley took a step back from the table, satisfied that we were all on the same page.

“Good. Tomorrow night then, seven o’clock. Be prepared.”

With that, we were done.

​

I made it to the Twelve Underground a half hour before we were due to meet up. I wasn’t the only one who was early either. I could see Streeter by the bar, dressed down to blend in and mingling as if he belonged there and I could see Thompson in a booth on the other side of the club. I didn’t speak to either of them. Instead, I ordered myself a beer and found a table, watching as the rest of the team trickled in. Kelley set himself up a few tables down from me, but didn’t so much as give me a look. That was just standard operating procedure though. Best not to make it too obvious that we knew each other.

​

As the first amateur band came up on stage, I spent most of my time looking at my phone with mild disinterest. I nursed my beer through the night and even though I knew Kelley would disapprove, I allowed myself to have a second. I figured a slight buzz might calm my nerves. I’d killed more than my fair share of vampires before, but I also won’t pretend that the reality of going up against one of the Venetians didn’t scare me a little. I’d heard the stories about them.

​

Our organization first ran into them back in the 1600s when they’d killed some vampire by the name of Di Cesare. He’d been some merchant working out of Venice, back when Venice was still its own republic.

​

Unfortunately, whoever had killed him hadn’t done a very through job. Not only was Di Cesare’s widow also a vampire, but she apparently wasn’t too happy about her husband's death. So in retaliation, she’d hired herself a small army of soldiers and retaliated.

​

She’d stormed our organization's Venetian headquarters and in doing so, found herself a coven of 12 witches they’d captured. They’d called themselves the Zodiac Sisters, each one supposedly representing a different sign of the Zodiac, but from what I’ve heard they really weren’t that notable. Just a bunch of young women meeting in the woods to play with the occult simply because they could. Nowadays, we wouldn’t trouble ourselves with something like that. But back then, they had a different attitude toward that sort of thing.

​

Maybe it was the grief of losing her husband that made her do it. Maybe she recognized those witches as kindred spirits who wanted revenge just as badly as she did. Maybe it was something else entirely. Nobody really knows. But Di Cesare’s widow offered them the same curse she had. She offered them vampirism and they’d taken it. All 12 of them and in doing so, they became her daughters, bound in blood.

​

Together they’d run rampant throughout the Venetian Republic, butchering the Knights of our organization until the canals of Venice ran red with their blood. In the end they’d driven them out entirely, hence why some of us simply referred to them as ‘The Venetians.’

​

When Venice fell to Napoleon near the end of the 18th century, our people returned and when they did, they came back in force, looking for some revenge for the Venice Massacre. They even managed to kill one of the sisters, Gemini. Although they never so much as laid a finger on any of the others. Eventually, it was determined that Di Cesare’s widow and her daughters had abandoned Venice and sure enough, a few decades later they turned up in Brazil exporting precious metals. Our organization had tried to go after them, but everyone they sent either came back in a box, or didn’t come back at all.

​

The rest is history. These days, most people associate the Di Cesare name with the jewlery house they own and the Di Cesare sisters are for the most part, in the wind. Their mother runs the business and they just run rampant, doing whatever it is they want. After all, who’s going to stop them? Like Kelley said, in 400 years, we’d only ever managed to kill one.

​

I was confident in his plan for the Maenad of course, but I also wasn’t stupid enough to believe that there was no chance this could all go horribly wrong. All we needed was one little mistake, and we’d all be dead. I knew that.

​

So what was one more beer, right?

​

As the show went on, I scanned the crowd. The others were scattered around, waiting for Eris Di Cesare to show her face and at around the 10:30 mark, I finally spotted her. She was standing near the bar, watching one of the bands perform with a beer in her hand. She had long dark hair tied back into a ponytail and what I can only describe as a punk or goth aesthetic. She wore a weathered black band tee with a button down flannel shirt tied around her waist and ripped black leggings. Her lipstick was black as was her eyeshadow although she bounced and swayed to the music as if she was having the time of her life. She barely even seemed to be able to stop herself from dancing.

​

This was not exactly what I had envisioned when I’d heard we’d be hunting one of the Venetians… For Gods sake, she barely looked old enough to drink. But I recognized her from a photograph I’d seen on the website promoting this event. This was Eris Di Cesare alright. I was certain of it.

​

After getting herself another drink, she left the bar, heading in my direction. She moved with an exuberant bounce in her step and paused only briefly to mingle with a few people, but moved with purpose. As she got closer to my table, I tried not to stare, although I guess looking down at my beer attracted her attention anyways. A pair of black canvas sneakers had the laces done up in an odd pentagram pattern stopped by my table, and a cheerful voice spoke to me.

​

“Heya! You doing alright? Don’t think I’ve seen you around before!” She said over the music, pausing to lean in against my table. I looked up at her and forced a smile. My eyes darted toward the tattoo of the Aries sign on the inside of her right wrist. Further proof that she was one of the Di Cesare sisters…

​

“Yeah, I’m doing great!” I said, “You?”

“Fantastic!” She said, “Hell of a show we’ve got tonight. Hope you enjoy it! And let me know if you need anything, alright?”

“You work here?” I asked.

“I own here.” She replied, tipping me a wink.

“Oh wow… Nice place you’ve got here then!”

“Yeah, it’s a cozy little living.” She said, “Can’t say I hate it, music, parties every night. The good outweighs the bad, if you ask me. Plus, it’s nice to support a good cause every once in a while!”

​

Right, this was a charity show, wasn’t it?

“Yeah, it’s great. Live music, good cause. Yeah…”

She tilted her head slightly as she sized me up, her smile never fading.

“Stop by the bar later. I’ll set you up with a refill, on the house.” She said, “And thanks again for coming out tonight.”

​

With that, she was gone, heading towards the stage. I checked my phone. Ten minutes until 11. She’d be making her announcement soon…

I swallowed down the last of my beer and waited. My gun was in its holster. I was as ready to go as I was going to get.

​

As the last band finished their set, the MC who’d been introducing the various bands came up again.

“Alright ladies and gentlemen, give it up for Alien Island! Let’s hear it!”

The people who’d actually been listening to that awful music clapped and cheered, but I got the feeling that it was more out of pity than anything else.

“Up next, we’ve got The November Boys to close things out tonight. But before we get to that, we wanted to give a very special thank you to Eris Di Cesare for helping us put this on and letting us use this space. Please everybody, give her a big round of applause!”

​

The applause this time was a little more enthusiastic as Eris took the stage, waving as she bounded towards the MC and took the mic from him.

“Thank you, thank you so much. You guys are being way too kind. Really, I should be thanking you for coming out tonight and supporting Homes for the Homeless. It’s a fantastic organization and one that’s made some real change in the community. So come on, give yourselves a round of applause!”

​

Predictably, the crowd loved that and Eris seemed to drink up their enthusiasm. Behind her, I could see some of the roadies switching out the instruments. One of them set an acoustic guitar right beside her. Oh God… was she going to sing? I hoped that Kelley would detonate that goddamn bomb before she started singing.

​

I looked over in his direction to see him sitting at the same table, although his brow was furrowed in frustration. He was looking down at something. The detonator maybe? Was something wrong?

“Yeah… you guys are awesome…” Eris continued, “But before we continue. I wanted to call out some special guests we’ve got here. A number of boys who were so kind to make the trek out from all across the west coast. Let me name some names here! Mr. Joseph Boyer…”

​

Across the venue, I saw Boyer sit upright at the mention of his own name. His eyes suddenly went wide and I felt a sinking dread in my stomach. Kelley looked up as well and even in the low light, I could see the color draining from his face.

“Mr. Brad Smith, Mr. Arthur Casey, Mr. James Streeter, Mr. Troy Moore…”

My name. My blood froze in my veins as I felt Eris looking right at me.

​

“And lastly but most importantly, Mr. Edward Kelley. Give these stalwart dumbfucks a round of applause, let’s go!”

The crowd applauded as if she hadn’t just singled out the six of us. Kelley stood up, detonator in hand. He kept pressing the button, but nothing happened.

​

“Oh? Did I make you mad?” Eris asked, grinning from ear to ear. “C’mon chuckles. Push that big red button and blow me straight back to hell!” She paused, then tilted her head to the side.

“Not working, is it?” She asked.

From the crowd, I watched a man begin to climb up on stage and paused as I recognized him. Mr. Thompson. The only one of us that Eris hadn’t named.

“You should choose your friends more carefully, Eddie,” She said, holding the bag up like a trophy, “Rookie mistake…”

​

Kelley just stared at her in disbelief, his eyes shifted to Thompson at her side. Looking into his eyes, I could see that he knew we were already dead… The crowd just stared slack jawed up at Eris as she spoke, oblivious to the gravity of anything she said.

​

I saw him going for his gun and I heard one gunshot ring out. The audience didn’t move. They barely even reacted. Kelley stumbled backward, clutching at his shoulder. He looked over toward the bar, where Streeter stood defiantly, a gun aimed at Kelley.

“Kinda sad, actually.” Eris said, “But hey, you tried your best, right? Now… sit back, and enjoy the show.”

​

I saw her toss the microphone aside and reach for the guitar. She dragged her nails across the strings, eliciting a sinister hissing noise. Her eyes settled on Kelley again as she began to play. She strummed fast, her fingers moving violently across the fretboard. The music she played hurt my head. It didn’t sound like any music a guitar would make. It was hard to say exactly what it sounded like. More like a flute of some sort I guess, although even that was stretching it. I can’t imagine how anyone could play a flute quite like that. The ear splitting sound of it made me flinch and scream as I clapped my hands over my ears. I tried to focus on her, but my vision was already going blurry. Looking at the guitar in her hands, I thought I could see some kind of ornate rune carved onto it, but it was hard to make out. I could taste blood in my mouth and the pain in my head was splitting.

​

I could hear Eris laughing over the music and as I struggled to pull myself out of my chair, I could see the crowd moving. The people around us started to dance. Only the dancing was… wrong. I don’t know how else to describe it. I’d never seen anything like this before, not from a witch or a vampire. Their bodies jerked like puppets on a string. They ground up against each other like animals. Beside me, I saw a man push a woman onto a table, kissing her deeply as he tore at her shirt. She was ripping at his pants all the while.

​

Eris kept strumming at that guitar, eyes on us all the while.

​

I could see Boyer trying to push his way through the crowd to get to the door, but they were grabbing at him. Eris’s attention turned on him. The music changed in pitch slightly as the dancers pulled him back and then… Then I watched as they started to pull Boyer apart.

​

He screamed all the while as they tugged at his limbs, pulling at him. I didn’t think they could actually hurt him, but I saw him begin to break. I saw the fabric of his shirt ripping and staining with blood. I could see the skin stretching. His face was turning red as he screamed in agony. Those screams almost drowned out that terrible music.

​

Eris was laughing again.

​

One of the other men who’d come in with us, either Casey or Smith broke through the crowd a few feet away from Boyer. He stumbled against the bar and I saw two men race after him. Casey or Smith stumbled as he tried to get away from them, and they overtook him. They tackled him to the ground and I heard him scream as they sank their teeth into his skin. One of them bit into his cheek and ripped away an entire chunk of skin.

​

Eris kept playing. The song just got faster and more chaotic, barely even resembling music anymore. It sounded more like a maddening droning. I took one last look at Boyer just in time to see the crowd rip one of his arms from his body. I couldn’t look at anymore.

​

Thompson had leaped off the stage and into the crowd, joining in the madness. I’d lost track of Streeter as well. I could hear the screams of the other man we’d brought with us as he met some horrible fate I couldn’t see, and I was grateful that I didn’t have to watch him die.

​

I looked over to where Kelley had been and saw him bracing himself against the table, struggling to stand. Up until then, my feet had been frozen to the ground, but upon seeing him, I finally found the strength to run again. I raced to his side to help him up, but Kelley swatted me off. I could hear a low, manic giggling noise and it took me a moment to realize that it was coming from him. His head turned toward me, and I took a step back, my pulse spiking in my chest as I saw the state he was in.

​

Trickles of blood ran from his eyes and ears, but he was wearing a rictus grin I’d never seen on him before. The gun still hung limply in his hand. He stared at me, smiling that dopey smile of his. I watched him take his free hand and jab a finger into the bullet wound in his shoulder. The sight of it made me flinch, but he didn’t even react to the pain. Instead, he just twisted the finger around then ripped it out. He brought his bloody finger to his lips, then traced a line up each of his cheeks, giving himself a crude, bloody smile.

​

“Better luck next time…” He said, his voice unable to hide the trembling fear he truly felt. Still smiling, but with tears in his eyes, I watched him raise the gun to his chin.

“Wait, NO!”

​

I reached out to try and stop him. But he’d already pulled the trigger. I watched gore erupt from the back of his head to stain the wall behind him. His eyes rolled over into his skull as he collapsed hard to the ground. I’ve seen death before. But watching Kelley blow his own brains out… It made me freeze like nothing else ever had.

​

I could hear Eris’s fingernails scratching against the strings again. Her laughter drowned out every other sound and finally, the music changed. Some other band was playing now. Although they didn’t sound much better, the music at least sounded like music. The chaos around me didn’t stop. People were still fucking on the tables. They ground against each other. Some of them were eating one of the bodies. And Eris stood atop the stage, drinking in the madness. She let the guitar drop to the ground before fixating her eyes on me. Then, like a tiger she was after me.

​

I watched her leap into the crowd, pushing through it to reach me. I started running again, the music following me as I fled.

​

I made it past the crowd and to the door. I almost made it up the stairs and out onto the street. But then I felt a cold hand on my shoulder. Eris pulled me back, slamming me against the wall, still wearing that awful grin of hers.

“Hey there champ, where’s the fire?” She asked.

​

I went for my gun. I knew there was a chance that shooting her would kill me, but I didn’t care. It was worth it! Before I could raise it to her head, she caught me by the wrist. My finger slipped on the trigger, firing a bullet into the ceiling but Eris didn’t even flinch. She just stared me dead in the eye.

​

“I’m gonna pretend you didn’t just do that,” she said. “You should really be a little more polite, considering how nice I’ve been to you.”

“Fuck you!” I spat. Her smile didn’t even falter.

​

“Actually I think the words you’re looking for are ‘thank you’. You know I could’ve had them tear you apart like they did with your friends back there, but I always think it’s better to leave at least one survivor, you know? To tell the story. I’ll bet your friends will love it!”

“Why to stroke your own sick ego?” I said, trying and failing to sound brave.

“No! Never!” She said, then paused, shrugged and added, “Okay, maybe a little. But that’s not the main point. I’ve actually got a message for whoever’s pulling the strings in your little operation. So put your listening ears on, please. You ready?”

She leaned in, pressing her mouth to my ear.

​

“You only still exist because we allow it. So don’t provoke us.”

​

She pulled back, her playful smile having darkened into something far more sinister. I stared at her, my entire body trembling.

“Now go on, get out of here. I’ve gotta check how many donations we got. You really should support the charity. It’s a pretty good cause. Oh, and before you go!” She paused and snapped her fingers twice.

​

From the throng came Mr. Thompson, disheveled and with a shirt covered in blood. He held an unopened bottle of beer in his hand.

“I promised you one on the house.” She said, taking the beer from him and pushing it into my hand. She patted me on the shoulder and with that, she turned to leave. The bottle slipped out of my hand and shattered on the ground at my feet.

​

I stood still for a few moments, still shaking and breathing heavily. Then, when my composure finally returned, I started up the stairs again, burst out onto the street, and kept running until my legs wouldn’t carry me any further.

​

My organization spent the next two days debriefing me, trying to understand where it all went wrong. The bodies of Kelley, Smith, Casey, and Boyer were never found. Streeter and Thompson both seemed to have dropped off the face of the earth. I think I’m the only one who knows what happened that night… well, the only one aside from Eris Di Cesare.

​

From the way they spoke to me, I got the impression they expected me to just sleep this all off like a bad hangover and get back to work. But I’m not that stupid. I can’t just forget the things I saw that night. I won’t just forget them. They might not listen to Eris Di Cesare’s warning, but I will.

​

I’ve sent in my resignation, effective immediately. I’m done with vampires.