A Tangle with Sava Savanovic

By Reese Currie

After three adventures in British Columbia, Creigh and Natalia leave the province with their next mission in their sights: the Serbian vampire Sava Savanovic. After his mill in Zarozje collapsed, Sava has been on the move... and the bodies are piling up. Creigh hopes to assemble a dream team of himself, Natalia, Mal and Dean to hunt the vampire and end his reign of terror.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Reese Currie
• Release date: Oct 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311711281

Reese Currie

Reese Currie has had the creative writing bug in his soul from a very young age. Now in his middle age, he is finally releasing the floodgates on his passions, including his passion for fiction writing.

Book preview

Chapter One

My name is Creighton Zee. My girlfriend Natalia Norayan and I were driving from her native British Columbia to my home in the Maritimes. We had just finished doing a job for RCMP Inspector Carl Lane by thinning out the herd of vicious cops in northern BC by nine officers. It was our third caper in BC, and things had gone a little badly at the end. Four of the dirty cops had attacked us and Natalia, by instinctively biting and scratching them, had turned them into werewolves. We managed to kill three of them, but one survived his encounter with us, and had caused a lot of collateral damage, resulting in the deaths of every on-duty RCMP officer at the Promenade barracks. It was mututally decided after that incident that we had to leave BC for a while to let the heat die down.

Yes, you got that right. Werewolves.

See, Natalia Norayan herself is a werewolf, and once, to save my life from bullet wounds, she turned me into a werewolf as well. She's a Christianized werewolf, though, so she doesn't transform into a werewolf, nor is she violent except in self defense. I was a Christian before she made me into a werewolf, and I never experienced the transformation.

The Roman Catholics taught in the middle ages that a conversion to Christianity would cure lycanthropy, the disease that makes people into werewolves. It was for the most part true. There are certain lingering symptoms, however. Neither of us can be killed by non-silver bullets, and there's something about the day of the full moon that makes Natalia in particular sexually voracious. We may have cured that by getting her baptized like I had been years before, but we haven't yet had our first full moon since the baptism. It may have had no effect.

You may be wondering why a red-blooded male would want to cure his girlfriend's sexual voraciousness. There's nothing really wrong with being sexually voracious as long as it doesn't make you do things you regret, but this past month, Natalia and I regretted what we both had done. We had rescued a beautiful, bisexual twenty-two year old girl from cops who had abducted her, raped her, beaten her, drugged her, and planned to sell her into white slavery. Her name was Jessie Alexander, and she was with us for the full moon. Natalia had become obsessed with her, and we ended up taking her to bed with us for a threesome.

I can't lay it all on Natalia. Obviously, she had a suppressed desire to try it with another girl, but obviously I also had a suppressed desire for threesomes myself, and an eagerness to help Natalia fulfill her desire. For that matter, Jessie herself had wanted everything that happened, but it had created in her a desire to have a permanent relationship with us that simply wasn't possible, and it hurt all of us to have to break up.

As bad as Jessie and I may have felt about the events, Natalia felt worse. A normally heterosexual woman, her moonlight desires, so to speak, had taken her a long way out of her comfort zone, and she was frankly afraid of what her libido might cause her to do on the next time. So we've tried baptism with the belief that it will enable her to walk in newness of life, which may eliminate these unwanted desires or at least enable her to better resist them. On the next full moon, we'll see how it worked.

On our second caper in BC, we had angered white supremacists in Alberta. We feared we might somehow be detected by them if we entered their province as we left BC, so we decided for safety reasons to bypass Alberta by driving down into the United States. I had all the paperwork required to be able to bring all of our firearms back into Canada, so as far as we could see, there were no disadvantages to this plan.

We went from Prince George and followed route 97 all the way down to Washington State, through Kamloops, Kelowna, and Penticton. Once in Washington, we turned off onto Route 20 to cross Idaho into Montana, the state where Dean Smith lived.

Dean was my armourer. A former resident of the United Kingdom, he left for the United States after the gun grabbers there managed to institute civilian disarmament, where no civilians were permitted to own guns. Dean emigrated to the States in order to continue his livelihood in the country he felt least likely to disarm its citizens, and he chose the state he felt was least likely to capitulate to federal pressures for gun grabs and other forms of civilian disarmament.

Montana had had a Democratic governor since 2005, and a Democratic senator since 1913 apart from some vacancies, but nevertheless the state thus far had stood firm against gun control. Dean didn't mind having pro-gun Democrat leadership, since he himself was more of a liberal than a conservative apart from the single issue of gun control. I guess this was one of the things Dean and I had in common, too, because generally speaking I held liberal leanings as well; I believed that the government had to have a regulating hand over business, but that it should encourage capitalism and free enterprise. I could agree with everything in the original Oxford Manifesto of 1947. It was sad to feel unable to vote for my country's Liberals as a result of the more socialistic add-ons since then, like the inherent distrust of the people that resulted in restrictive policies on legal gun ownership and free speech. Those things belonged with Chairman Mao, Lenin and Stalin, not with people who wanted to live in a free country.

We arrived in Dean's adopted city on the second day of our travels, found a place to park, and went to his gun store. It was my first time ever being there in person.

Dean's whole face lit up at the sight of us coming in his door. Creigh, Natalia! You made it.

My face was also lit up, not only at seeing my friend, but also at seeing first hand his well-stocked store.

Welcome to my humble store, Dean said, coming around the counter. How did those Pitbulls work out?

They're great, I said. I had bought a couple of nine-millimetre Charter Arms Pitbull revolvers from Dean. Normally nine-millimetre guns were semi-automatics, but we used revolvers so that we could reduce the powder load to prevent overpenetration, without causing the gun to malfunction. Such low powder loads would cause semi-automatics to jam. We needed the lower power to keep the silver bullet from exiting the werewolf's body.

I've got some used .357 revolvers, if you want to get your hands on a .357 again, Dean said. They're Smith & Wessons, not Ruger or Charter Arms.

Geez, already with the sales pressure, I joked. The Smiths probably cost more used than a Ruger or Charter Arms new.

Dean only had to think about it for a moment. As a matter of fact, they do.

You do love .357's, Natalia reminded me.

I do, but I like the nine-millimetres a lot, now that we've got double-action revolvers we can both comfortably use that can shoot the were— I stopped and checked for anyone who might overhear, and found no one. The werewolf rounds, I finished.

That's actually why I'm telling you about the .357's, Dean said, starting back toward his counter. You won't believe this.

He rooted around behind his counter and emerged with something that looked like a wooden stake. From the stake, Dean removed eight silver bullets in .357 magnum. Coonan .357 magnum silver bullets, Dean said. Coonan went with the same approach we did. It's a lead bullet with a silver jacket. It's about fifty dollars for eight bullets.

I looked them over. I wonder if they overpenetrate, I commented.

Dean considered this. You know, they probably would in a human—or werewolf—body, he said. They're 158 grain bullets, the kind of thing that could take down a bear. If you wanted to keep it in the body you'd probably go for 125 grain. Of course, we could pry off the bullet and reduce the powder load, make it more of a .38 Special with a really heavy slug.

I was somewhat interested. The nine-millimetre is doing the trick, I said, thinking aloud, and it lets Natalia and I be comfortable shooting the same calibre. Still, if we can both shoot nines comfortably, we can both shoot .38's even more comfortably.

The jackets were rather hard for me to make, Dean said. In this particular application, the nine-millimetre doesn't offer anything the .38 Special wouldn't offer.

He shrugged and added, We'd have to work out the right powder load to avoid overpenetration while still being effective, which might require a bit more power than a stock .38, like a .38 +P or .38 +P+, but it shouldn't be too harsh to shoot.

It's interesting, because one way or the other, I need more silver bullets, I said.

Did you encounter werewolves? Dean asked in a hushed voice, even though we were alone in the store.

Yeah, I said. We were attacked and Natalia was disarmed, so she resorted to biting and scratching.

The look on Dean's face indicated that he didn't understand the problem.

That turned them into werewolves, Natalia supplied.

Oh! Dean exclaimed. He looked at Natalia. I wouldn't have thought of that, either.

Well, if you're an unarmed woman, biting and scratching are natural, instinctive defenses, I said. And how about me? What if I'm disarmed, and I punch somebody? Say I nick them with a fingernail. Instant werewolf. Or say somebody punches one of us in the mouth, and scratches his fist on our teeth? Instant werewolf.

I certainly never thought of that before, either, Dean said.

Did Mal tell you about the fist fight with the cops? I asked.

He told me your Krav Maga moves were 'sick', Dean replied with a smile.

I looked at Natalia. If I hadn't been wearing my driving gloves, or if either of them had gotten a punch in on me, I might have turned them into werewolves, I said, and our werewolf ammunition was over a hundred kilometres away. If we'd made them werewolves, we couldn't have killed them.

A look of terror crossed Natalia's features.

So from now on, I want at least one chamber on our revolvers to have a silver-jacketed bullet in it, I finished. We could accidentally create a werewolf at any time.

Dean looked away for a moment, then looked back at me. One of the reasons I wanted you to consider going with Coonan's silver-jacketed .357's, is I don't know if I'll be able to operate here indefinitely. We won the last round against the gun grabbers, but goodness knows what happens next. So, I may not be around North America to make you new silver-jacketed bullets.

Well, maybe we have to look at that, I said. But I have an additional wrinkle for you to think about.

What's that? Dean asked.

Vampire ammunition.

Chapter Two

Vampire ammunition, Dean repeated.

I nodded.

Do we have any reason to think that vampires are real? Dean asked.

Do you remember, late last year, there was a big scare in Serbia because people feared that the dormant vampire, Sava Savanovic, had been awakened?

Dean tried hard to remember, then shook his head.

"It was in the National Post, I explained. A Canadian newspaper."

I guess the American papers missed this one, Dean said. He chuckled. I suppose if it isn't a form of pro-Obama propaganda, or some race-baiting hack piece, or some pro gun control fiction, it isn't worthy of print.

I sighed. Well, anyway, the vampire was believed to inhabit a mill, and supposedly used to attack people who would use the mill. The mill collapsed, and the local government there issued a public health warning about the possibility of vampire attacks.

Local government where? asked Dean.

Zarozje, I said. It's a little village near Bajina Bašta in Serbia. I don't know if I'm pronouncing any of that correctly. I only know what the words look like in print.

Dean absorbed this information, then said, Did you know Mal and I met while serving in the same infantry battalion? We served in central Bosnia for six months in '93 and '94.

I did not know that, I said.

It was a three sided war, with Bosnians, Croats and Serbs all fighting each other, Dean said. War crimes abounded. The CIA estimated that ninety percent of the war crimes were committed by Serbs. Our restrictive rules of engagement wouldn't let us get involved very much; it was extremely frustrating seeing common people victimized. Sometimes I envied the British mercenaries who came, because at least they were able to do something about it. The UN had our hands tied to the point I almost don't know why we were there. Mainly to protect aid convoys. Anyway, I'm not entirely unfamiliar with the Serbs.

Okay, I said.

Let me tell you something one of the Bosnians I met over there told me about the Serbs, that you should keep in mind as you evaluate whether this vampire is real, Dean said. Are you ready for this piece of wisdom? I can quote it exactly the way he said it.

Shoot, I said.

'Serbs are fucking crazy', Dean said. In my time in Bosnia, I found nothing that made me think my Bosnian friend's analysis is any way flawed. A vampire would be kind compared to most of the Serbs I've heard about.

They had a crazy dictator, I reminded Dean. A war criminal.

Slobodan Milosevic, I remember, Dean confirmed. But there were plenty of every day Serbs in their military who committed heinous war crimes, participating in ethnic cleansing that included rape camps.

After a moment of silence, Dean continued. "After we left the service, as you know, I became a gunsmith and Mal became a mercenary, because in Bosnia he thought the mercenaries did more good than we did as official UN peacekeeping forces; at least, the ones that fought on the Bosnian side. I tried to get him out of the mercenary business for years. I asked him to come join me at the store, you know, do something safe. I almost had him when Britian decided to institute their stupid gun ban and my store there was finished.

It still worked out for the best, though. I was financially ruined, but Mal came to the rescue. He helped me move here and start this store. He wanted to just give me the money, but I insisted he have a stake in the store, and over time, he's come around to working here and making money on his investment. He doesn't fix or sell guns, he leaves all that to me, but he does work as a firearms instructor here, in the range attached to the store. Apart from the occasional mercenary diversion, like to help you last month, that's what he does now.

Dean paused for another moment, then continued. The reason Mal was a mercenary was he felt the governments of the world aren't proactive enough about stopping the things that Serbs did in Bosnia and later in Kosovo. As a mercenary, he could be employed to stop such people immediately, not after many lives had been lost or destroyed while politicians debated what to do.

We sat in silence for another few moments before Dean concluded, So, you'll have to forgive me for needing more than some crazy Serb politician's word for it that there's a vampire on the loose.

Jack thinks it's real, I said. He wants me to be prepared in case this Sava Savanovic character somehow makes his way from Serbia to Canada, and that's one reason why I'm asking about ammunition.

I thought we'd have to kill a vampire with a wooden stake, Natalia commented.

I'd rather avoid that if I could, I replied. One has to get pretty close to the vampire to do that.

Jack believing it does bring it to another level of credibility, Dean admitted. Jack doesn't really think Sava is coming to Canada?

Well, he implied it was a possibility he wanted me to be ready for, I replied.

That's not going to happen, Dean said dismissively. Assuming Sava even exists, which is doubtful, he's had hundreds of years to leave that little village—what is it again?

Zarozje, I supplied.

And he hasn't, Dean finished.

Dracula went to England to expand his net, I reminded Dean.

In fiction, Dean reminded me. In tradition, vampires are bound to things like the location of their buried caskets. Bram Stoker dodged that problem with an unburied, portable casket for Dracula. Sava Savanovic—is that the right name?—probably is buried in Zarozje or has some other connection there.

I believe he was buried there, but Sava's connection was to the mill that collapsed last year, I said. Jack said Sava was on the move after the collapse.

That's puzzling. Do you know how far he's moved? Dean asked.

Jack didn't say, I replied.

Dean sat thoughtfully for a few moments, then asked, How does Jack know Sava's moving?

He said exsanguinated bodies were appearing, each one farther away from the village, I replied.

Dean shook his head. It shouldn't be happening, he commented. "Did you read Bram Stoker's Dracula, or just watch the movies loosely based on the book?"

I read it ages ago, I said. Kind of a snoozer, for me, anyway.

Dean barked laughter. Indeed. Anyway, he got to England because he'd hired people to move him in his casket. Remember the part of the book where Dracula left England to return home? They chased after the group that was moving him, and finally caught up to them before they got to the castle, and staked him there on the road.

I remember that, vaguely, I said. Maybe I should read it again.

Dean shook his head. The fiction doesn't matter. The point is, if Sava's moving, somebody's moving him. I don't remember this being an aspect of Bram Stoker's book, but if he is being moved by someone, he's got to stop to eat.

I processed what Dean had said. Holy shit, I exclaimed when all the implications sunk in.

Too vile to transport, said Dean. Holy water would be a better tool for the task of chasing vampires.

Natalia and I stared at Dean blankly for an instant, then started to laugh.

"I wonder if somebody is moving Sava," I said when I recovered.

You'd think it would be a bloody dangerous thing to do, Dean replied. Pardon my expression, that particular pun was unintended. But, it is something to explore with Jack, I suppose. I can't see how anyone could move him, because presumably they would need to have his casket to carry him in, and as far as I know, it's still buried in Zarozje.

He's not connected to his casket, but to the mill, I reminded Dean. So under those conditions, I don't know how they could move him at all.

Dean paused for a few moments, then said, If someone is moving Sava somehow, you have to wonder why. In Bram Stoker's story, Dracula was an aristocrat who paid money to be moved. As I recall, all of the Serbian vampires were peasants.

We all sat in silence for a few moments, considering the possibilities.

So, have you done any research on what kind of bullets might work on a vampire? Dean asked.

I have, I confirmed. I have researched the folklore in depth, and I am certain that bullets can kill vampires, as long as both the bullet and the shot taken meet certain requirements.

That's what you've been doing on the Internet every evening on our way down here, isn't it? Natalia said. Researching how you could shoot a vampire.

Yes, I said, nodding in confirmation.

Dean took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Okay, he said, lay it on me.

Chapter Three

Like with werewolves, the bullet needs to have a silver component, I began. I don't actually understand why silver bullets work on werewolves, but in my research I found that silver and iron are cursed metals for vampires. If you were to shoot a vampire with a lead bullet, the healing would be instantaneous.

It takes a little time for you to heal, Dean observed. Does it take less time with other werewolves?

Dean had seen me shot with a shotgun blast shortly after I had become a werewolf. I'd passed out for a little while and had come to uninjured.

It seems to take about twenty minutes to half an hour for me to recover from being shot with lead bullets, I said. A pure werewolf, that is, one that is not Christianized, seems to get over being shot with lead bullets much faster than I do.

Within a couple of minutes, judging from that werewolf cop that got into the bedroom, Natalia commentedd. The amount of time it takes for you to recover seems to depend on how many times you've been shot.

With silver bullets, or silver blades for that matter, the healing in a vampire is slowed down dramatically, I continued. I said this works under the right conditions. You have to hit the vampire directly in the heart to kill him with a silver bullet. If a vampire lives long enough to look at a full moon after being shot with a silver bullet, it is believed that he will both heal and become infuriated, making him much harder to kill. To minimize that possibility, it is strongly suggested in the folklore to add garlic or holy water to the bullet somehow. Probably put one or the other somehow into the hollow point.

Mashed garlic would stick in a hollow-point, Natalia offered. We'd need to mash up cloves of garlic with a garlic press, then put that in the hollow-point.

Well, we can't use nine-millimetre for this, Dean said, and I doubt the Coonans would work either.

Why not? I asked.

We had to take away a lot of the nine-millimetre's velocity to prevent overpenetration and keep the bullet in the body. But, in this instance, even if we could keep the high velocity, the lightness of the bullet would work against you.

How? I asked.

Let's say I absolutely had to shoot you in the heart, Dean said. He got up and stood in a different spot. From most angles—this angle, for instance, he added, prodding a finger where the bullet might hit, I would likely hit a rib trying to hit the heart. From the front, he added, moving into position, the bullet has to break through your sternum.

Dean sat back down. With a heavier bullet, specifically, something 40 calibre or higher, the bullet is going to break right through that rib, or the sternum, and keep going straight into the heart. With bullets under 40 calibre, like the nine-millimetre, that's not what happens. When it hits a rib, it won't likely break through. Instead, it might chip the rib and be deflected, changing the trajectory. So you shoot him aiming for the heart, the bullet hits a rib, and ends up in his stomach or in his lung. It may be good enough for werewolf work, but it's really not a safe round for going after vampires, if you absolutely have to hit the heart.

I sighed. I remember you asking me, when we settled on the nine-millimetre for werewolves, whether I had to hit a werewolf in the heart, I said.

Dean also sighed in sympathetic response. Yes, I did ask you that, and this is why. For a vampire bullet, we probably need to use .40 or .45 to guarantee breaking through the bone that protects the heart and not deflecting and missing the heart itself.

Well, the silver and garlic don't necessarily have to be introduced to the body simultaenously, I reasoned. Maybe we use the Pitbulls to deliver the silver, and use the 1911 for a coup-de-gras shot with a garlic filled hollow-point.

Dean looked doubtful. Assuming they're real, and have the properties you've described, you kind of can't mess with a vampire, he said. I'd want the elements going in together.

I nodded my head, and sighed again. It's going to delay us significantly to trade guns with you on this side of the border, I said.

Let me worry about that aspect, Dean said. Remember, I've got a contact in the Canadian Border Services Agency, one of Jack's men, that expedites the paperwork. The only catch is, even Jack isn't comfortable allowing prohibited guns across the border.

I didn't know that, I replied with surprise. I never thought about how you were getting guns over the border so quickly. I remember the first gun I bought from you took quite a while.

It's pretty much automatic now, Dean said. I assumed you knew Jack was behind that.

No, I replied, but I'll take it.

So let's stop worrying about cross-border issues and get on with outfitting you with the best possible guns for the job, Dean said.

Dean sat back and stroked his chin. You know, if we switched our silver bullet platform to a .40 or .45, neither of those rounds is known to over-penetrate as often as a nine, and both will break through bone to be effective vampire rounds. We probably wouldn't have to reduce the powder charge, and if not, then the silver-jacketed rounds would still be able to reliably cycle a slide. It would open up the possibility of using a semi-automatic.

It's a tempting possibility, I replied. The ability to reload quickly would be good against a vampire, especially if it turns out to be a group of vampires, as opposed to an individual vampire.

If he is being transported, as we suspect, you also have to be concerned about the people who might be transporting him, Dean added. "In Dracula, Van Helsing managed to get away with shooting just one of the people transporting the vampire; but they were paid drones, and it's not worth dying for a few bucks. The people transporting Sava may be a lot more dedicated because they'll be transporting him for their own reasons."

Dean pinned me in his stare, and held up a finger. Mark my words: those reasons will be crazy Serbian reasons, he said. More likely than not, crazy Serbian political reasons.

You really have a hate on for the Serbians, I said.

Serbs, Dean corrected me, and my hatred for them is not without good reason.

I sighed and nodded. Point taken, I said.

"Remember when you were talking earlier, about having one of the cylinders in your