Burke and the Vampire Read online

  Burke and the Vampire

  By Edward Kendrick

  Published by JMS Books LLC

  Visit jms-books.com for more information.

  Copyright 2019 Edward Kendrick

  ISBN 9781634868143

  Cover Design: Written Ink Designs | written-ink.com

  Image(s) used under a Standard Royalty-Free License.

  All rights reserved.

  WARNING: This book is not transferable. It is for your own personal use. If it is sold, shared, or given away, it is an infringement of the copyright of this work and violators will be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

  No portion of this book may be transmitted or reproduced in any form, or by any means, without permission in writing from the publisher, with the exception of brief excerpts used for the purposes of review.

  This book is for ADULT AUDIENCES ONLY. It may contain sexually explicit scenes and graphic language which might be considered offensive by some readers. Please store your files where they cannot be accessed by minors.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are solely the product of the author’s imagination and/or are used fictitiously, though reference may be made to actual historical events or existing locations. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States of America.

  * * * *

  Burke and the Vampire

  By Edward Kendrick

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 1

  “What’s on your agenda for tonight?” Dan asked Burke as they got ready to leave work.

  “Not a damned thing worth talking about,” Burke replied in disgust. “Go home, eat, watch whatever dreck’s on TV.”

  “On a Friday night? Man, are you crazy?”

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Hit up a club. Find a willing chick and take her home. That’ll liven up your life.” Dan winked salaciously.

  “I might.” Not that he would. Burke only said that to get Dan off his back. “Is that what you’re doing?”

  “Thinking about it. Tell you what, we’ll go together. There’s a great place on Magazine and they have free oysters.” He waggled his eyebrows.

  Burke snorted. “That’s all a lot of hype. They’re no more an aphrodisiac than…than anything in there.” He pointed to vending machine full of wrapped sandwiches in the break room as they walked by it on the way to the elevator.

  “Yeah, but the ladies don’t know that. Feed them a few and they’re turned on. It’s all mind over matter.”

  “If you say so. I’ll still pass, thanks.” Stupid bastard.

  “Whatever.” Dan hurried to the elevator, buttonholing another man they worked with just as the guy was getting on. Burke heard Dan ask him, “What’s on your agenda tonight?” and shook his head as the elevator doors closed behind them.

  “Talk about desperate,” he said under his breath. He got on the elevator when it returned, taking it down to the ground floor. From there he walked to where he always parked his car—in a lot a few blocks from the building. Five minutes later he was on his way home, glad for the end of the work week.

  As a single man, his house was more than he needed, but it had been in his family since the turn of the last century and he wasn’t about to part with it. It was three stories, with four bedrooms and baths, and a large kitchen that he’d modernized soon after he’d inherited the house. It also had the requisite living and dining rooms, plus two parlors, one of which he’d turned into his home office.

  He’d probably still be living in his old apartment in the Quarter if his parents hadn’t been killed in the 2015 terrorist attack in Paris while they were there to celebrate their thirtieth wedding anniversary. A hell of a way to end their lives he often thought, but at least they died together and were undoubtedly happy—until the last few terrifying moments.

  He’d moved into the house a month later, after packing up most of their clothing and other items he didn’t need, which he gave to some of the shelters in the city. Modernizing the kitchen was something they’d planned on doing—someday—so he did it in their memory. “And because it was God awful,” as he’d told a friend at the time.

  He parked in the garage, then walked across the plant-filled patio to the large deck spanning half the rear of the house. A wall of windows reflected the early evening sunlight as he unlocked the glass-paned door at one end, which opened onto the kitchen and dining nook. Before heading upstairs to change clothes, he turned on the coffeemaker.

  His bedroom, the same one he’d had growing up, faced the street with a balcony above the front porch. The day was warm but not uncomfortable, so he opened the doors and windows to let in the fresh breeze, stepping out onto the balcony to take in the view of the river less than three blocks away.

  “Nice night,” his neighbor Tom called up.

  “It is,” Burke agreed. “I see you’re taking advantage of it.”

  The older man laughed. “My grass needs mowing before everyone accuses me of trying to turn my front yard into a jungle.”

  “If that happens, you could borrow some of the lions and tigers from the zoo to inhabit it,” Since their homes were only a few blocks from Audubon Zoo, it was a logical, if silly reply.

  “I think my wife might object.”

  “Probably.” Burke gave him a wave and went inside. Stripping, he hung up his slacks and shirt then went to shower. When he was finished, he put on a pair of well-worn jeans and a dark blue T-shirt and went down to see what he could fix for dinner.

  An hour later, feeling well fed but not stuffed, it was time to see what trouble he could get into—or keep other people out of. He gathered up what he needed and took off.

  * * * *

  “You really should rethink that,” Burke said under his breath as he watched a young man who looked as if he couldn’t be more than twenty, if that, stalking a very inebriated tourist who had apparently decided to use a dimly-lit side street to get where he was going. He meant the tourist, but it applied to the young man as well.

  When they came to the entrance to one of the ubiquitous courtyards that dotted the Quarter, Burke heard the tourist mutter, “This is a good a place as any to take a piss.”

  The young man was right behind him, obviously waiting for the right moment to attack.

  Burke drew his silenced pistol from his waistband holster, slipped into the narrow entryway, and fired twice. “Got you,” he whispered as the bullets tore into the young man, one of them piercing his heart. Almost instantly, all that was left of him was dust drifting down to the pavement.

  The drunken tourist was blissfully unaware of what had transpired as he unzipped and then pissed into the water of a small fountain in the center of the courtyard. Just as well that he hadn’t seen anything. It was always touch and go, trying to convince a vampire’s potential victim that they had been imagining things. Usually Burke was glib enough to carry it off. Occasionally that wasn’t the case. Then he had to swear them to secret, lying by telling them if they revealed what they’d seen the vampire’s sire would find and kill them. “Even I’m not strong enough to keep that from happening,” he’d say, and they believed him.

  Being New Orleans, even if they didn’t keep their promise most people would figure they were so taken with the vampire legends which flooded the city that they were playing into them to boost their
egos.

  As soon as the drunk had staggered by him, Burke took time to reload his pistol with more silver bullets. He hoped he wouldn’t have to use the gun again, at least tonight, but he never counted on it.

  Returning to the street, Burke walked the half block to Bourbon and strolled toward Esplanade, staying hyper aware of the people around him. From there, he made his way back to Canal Street then across to Royal where he repeated the process—and the same on Chartres and Decatur. Nothing piqued his interest, or his senses, as far as what he was searching for.

  It was his routine every Friday night. Saturday nights he cruised either the Central Business District or along Magazine Street, which ran from the Garden District to Uptown. The rest of the week, being a working stiff, he couldn’t afford to stay up late enough to do much good and still be in shape for his job the following day.

  If I could clone myself so there were ten of me, maybe I could rid the city of the real vampires who haunt it. But he was only one man, and human. A man with a special gift.

  * * * *

  It had all begun four years previously when Burke had been the victim of an attack by three homophobic men who thought the world would be better off with one less fag, as a witness said they’d called him. Burke had almost died that night, ending up in a coma for two long months—at least long as far as his parents were concerned. He, of course, didn’t remember it, or the attack. Selective amnesia, his doctor had called it. As far as Burke was concerned that was fine.

  Once he’d recuperated under his parents’ tender ministrations, which took another two months, he returned to his job as a software developer for a small gaming company. His boss greeted him, if not with literal open arms, at least enthusiastically.

  “You’ve been missed. We have a new project for one of our clients and…” He rattled on about it as they walked to Burke’s workstation. “Oh,” he finally said, “How are you?”

  “If you mean do I still have a working brain, I do,” Burke replied dryly. “I may not remember what happened, but everything else? Yeah, I’m good.”

  A week later, while walking home after working very late to finish an important part of the game he was creating, he sensed something strange—or rather someone strange. He finally homed in on a man strolling slowly along on the opposite side of Chartres, avoiding the many Friday night revelers, mostly tourists, who had taken over the Quarter in the week before Thanksgiving.

  Imagination. It has to be. Or something screwed up in my head as a result of the attack.

  He tried to convince himself that was true but deep in his bones he knew the man wasn’t human—which was impossible.

  All the stories about vampires, and ghosts, and what have you? That’s all they are—myths. Sure, the tales are rampant in New Orleans and they make tour guides rich, but such creatures don’t exist. They can’t.

  Despite his reluctance to believe what he was feeling was real, he followed the man. He looked like half the other people Burke could see, dressed in jeans, a T-shirt, and sandals.

  He’s definitely well-built, and not bad looking from what I can see of him. But there’s something creepy about him.

  The man continued walking, glancing into some of the bars along the street but never entering. When he reached Esplanade, he crossed the avenue, heading to Frenchman Street. Burke followed.

  Again, the man strolled by various bars, checking them out but not going into any of them. When he got to the fence surrounding Washington Square, he leaned against it, his gaze apparently locked on the bar cattycorner across the intersection.

  Bemused, but not willing to give up until he knew what was going on with the—the creature? If I haven’t gone totally around the bend, that’s what he is.

  He found a spot in the shadowed doorway of a closed tourist shop where he could see the man without being seen. His wait was rewarded half an hour later when the man left his post, crossed the street, and approached a woman who was leaving the bar. Whatever he said to her, she nodded then walked docilely beside him down the dark side street to an even darker alley.

  Burke hurried after them, trying not to draw their attention when he got to the alley’s entrance. Ahead of him he could barely see the pair in the dim light over a shop’s rear door. He could hear them, however. The woman was telling the man what it would cost for her to give him a blowjob.

  In a husky voice, as if he was unused to talking, the man replied, “I do not want sex.” Then he gripped her chin, forcing her head back.

  Burke knew what would happen next but was unable to force himself to try to save her. He watched, frozen in horror, when the creature bit her throat, lapping and then drinking the blood that flowed from the wound until she collapsed. It was over in seconds. The creature licked the wound then stared into the woman’s eyes before he released his grip on her. As she fell to the ground, he vanished.

  Burke took two hesitant steps forward, then two more, before dashing to the woman’s sprawled body. She was pale and cool to his touch, but alive and breathing. There was no sign of a wound on her throat. Taking out his phone, he called 911, explaining that he’d found a woman passed out in an alley and was afraid to move her. After giving the approximate address, by cross streets, he hung up.

  “They’ll be here soon,” he told her, even though he knew she didn’t hear him. Then he walked away, leaving the alley by the far end, heading slowly back to his apartment.

  I didn’t see that. I didn’t. I couldn’t have. It was impossible. He wanted to believe it was, but knew differently. He was a vampire. There’s no other explanation. Why me? Why did I know he was something inhuman? No one else seemed to know. He touched his head, feeling the scar hidden beneath his hair, the only physical reminder of what had been done to him. Did the beating scramble my brain and…and awaken something deep inside which allows me to sense when there’s one of them around?

  It was the only explanation he could come up with. As much as he hated the idea, he had the feeling it was the truth.

  God help me if there are more around. What do I do then? How do I stop them? Is it even possible? I’m just a human. I don’t have supernatural powers. He smiled grimly. Well, other than knowing when one of them is nearby, apparently.

  * * * *

  Six months later, his parents were dead and he was living in the house close to Audubon Park where he’d grown up. In the interim, he had done as much research as possible about vampires and how to eliminate them. Not that he ran into them by the dozens, but he had come across three. Two had seemed benign—or at least they hadn’t attacked anyone. They did vanish without a trace soon after he’d spotted and began to follow them. He wondered if they knew he was behind them and thought maybe he was cruising and would try to pick them up. If so, neither of them acknowledged him. Instead, they turned a corner and disappeared before he got there.

  He came upon the third one very late one evening. The vampire was on Magazine, not too far from one of Burke’s favorite places to eat when he didn’t feel like cooking. As Burke followed him, the creature approached a young man. Whatever he said to him had the young man nodding. They walked together to a cut through between two houses, with Burke a few yards behind them. When they were deep in the shadows, the vampire stared directly into young man’s eyes. As far as Burke could figure from what he’d learned, the vampire was mesmerizing him before feeding.

  This time, Burke was prepared. He had bought a small pistol from an illicit dealer and taught himself how to make silver bullets. Then he had spent some time learning how to shoot accurately. Now, he pulled it from his pocket and fired. Much to Burke’s dismay, the vampire moved at the same moment and the bullet hit it in the shoulder. Still, it accomplished something because the vampire screamed in pain before vanishing. His intended victim shook himself as he came out of his trance. Looking around, he frowned, saying loudly enough for Burke to overhear, “What the hell? Where the hell am I?” before walking back to the street.

  At least I know one
thing is true. Silver can hurt vampires. Badly, from the way it reacted.

  After that experience, Burke honed his shooting skills until he could hit both stationary and moving targets with precision.

  In the three years after his parents’ deaths, he had become a seasoned vampire hunter, taking out any of them he came across who were, or obviously planned on, attacking humans. Burke often wondered if his ability to find vampires also included something which kept them from realizing he knew what they were. He figured, hoped, it meant they couldn’t read his mind, presuming they tried. Not that they’d have a reason to until it was too late. Either that or he had a built-in mind shield to hide his intentions when he did go after one. Or maybe both, he decided.

  There’s too damned many of them, he sometimes thought. I’ll never be able to eliminate all the predators. He had decided from the beginning not to attack ones who were doing nothing wrong. Maybe, just maybe, not all of them are evil. If there are, well, good ones for lack of a better word, I suppose they have as much right to live as I do.

  Chapter 2

  “Find him,” Antoine snarled. “I don’t care what it takes; find the son of a bitch before he kills more of us.”

  “Once again, exactly how do you plan on my doing that?” Reynaud replied.

  It had been what seemed like a perpetual argument between them since ‘The Hunter’, as they’d tagged him, had begun taking out vampires in the city. Whoever he was, he seemed to know who was or wasn’t one. He had killed more than thirty of them in Antoine’s territory in the past three years—that they knew of—and injured three who had managed to escape before he got in another shot. That was how they knew he was using silver bullets, as they, or more precisely Doctor Bonnay, another vampire in Antoine’s inner circle, had extracted the bullets from the wounded victims of The Hunter’s attacks.

  The problem was, none of the three victims had seen who had shot them, or even known he was there until it was too late.