I Kill Monsters: Fury (Book 1)

By Tony Monchinski

The novel is set in the summer of 1998 in New York City. Beneath the surface of the city, gangs of vampires have been living, preying on the dregs of society--the homeless, destitute, prostitutes--no one cares about. A crew of thieves robs vampire families robs vampire gangs of their money and blood, playing the vampires off against one another.

A job goes wrong and they mess with a vampire they never should have, the Albanian Kreshnik, who serves the dark Lord Rainford. Rainford's minions seek out and destroy Frank's crew one by one.

Boone is the youngest and brashest of the humans. He's a racist, a drug addict, given to violence and can't shoot to save his life. Boone evidences supernatural attributes, such as the ability to heal rapidly from seemingly devastating injuries. He's also occasionally shadowed by a spector he refers to as Stan that only he can see. Boone feels an attraction to Emanuela, a witch-like character who hunts vampires and other creatures like them with "the Sisterhood."

The novel culminates in Boone's confrontation against Rainford's army in an decrepit warehouse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Permuted
• Release date: Oct 3, 2014
• ISBN: 9781618683663

Tony Monchinski

Tony Monchinski is a freelance writer living in New York City.

Book preview

*

So then, you are he, the one my people whisper of with dread and loathing. You laid low here before me…Forgive me, if you would, my merriment. If only you had known how my people feared you. They spoke your name like a terrible secret, and now…to see you here, like this…

…Oh, how the mighty have fallen…but they always do, do they not?

…I implore you, do not die before the sun sets…grasp you stomach and hold its contents within…a terrible wound, indeed, but when I think of the devastation you and your ‘friends’ have inflicted on my own kind…well, let us sit here and talk and contemplate finitude together, yes?

…you and I are separated by more than this mote of sunlight…it is true what the legend holds, that my kind cannot venture forth in the light of day…but, if what you call ‘immortality’ has granted me one insight, it is this—that though the day is long, the day must pass, as inevitably it shall, as invariably all do, and with its passage comes the night…always the night…the glorious, damned night. And then I will up and cross this space between us, and I will introduce myself in—how shall I say?—a more proper fashion, one appropriate to our situation.…

…you’ve lost a great deal of blood, and yet, you refuse to die. Your obstinacy is admirable--and yet, by your willfulness you arrived here, did you not?

…another thing this ‘life’ has taught me, there is that which is worse than non-existence…you knew you were walking into a trap, and yet you came…and here you are…which means you possess an over-inflated sense of self potency. Are you truly that headstrong, that rash?

…where were we? Ah yes, you must forgive me…is that your real name? Is it? You won’t say. You choose not? Or you cannot? Well, I do not think I would be much in the mood for conversation either if I lay disemboweled. So I shall speak, and you will listen…

…and I will talk until the end of this day, and then perhaps we will explore together the sounds a man can make in the dark of the night…so do not die now, I beseech you. Do not perish, as you yourself have destroyed all those around us…a mighty warrior you may be, and though I detest your essence, I cannot but respect your skill. To do otherwise would be to refute the irrefutable…

…so lie there now and listen, and I will relate to you an account of a warrior the likes of whom you have never known, the likes of whom I doubt I will ever see again…in this way we shall pass the time together, shall we not? And then will come the night, for the night always comes…

…my master was a cruel and terrible lord…

Wednesday

26 August 1998

1.

4:25 A.M.

The rain fell in torrents from the grey-clouded skies, pounding the hood of the K-car. The bleached-out burgundy hood had withstood more than a thousand days under the merciless sun. The car was parked on the corner of a blighted Bronx neighborhood, blocks of derelict, boarded-up three- and five-story buildings looming over the street. One block over the towers of the projects, cold and concrete, rose up to the clouds.

There were three men in the vehicle and they had been there for some time. If anyone had been stupid enough to approach the Reliant through the downpour they would have seen two light-skinned men and a black man inside. Their faces were inhospitable, all business. Their hard looks alone would have been enough to send away anyone too nosy for their own good.

It wasn’t an unusual site in this neighborhood, a carful of men looking like they didn’t belong. People from other boroughs and states visited here every night for the drugs and women. The rain had sent the whores indoors hours earlier and their johns stayed away.

Only one building on the desolate block showed any signs of activity: a bodega down the street, on the corner opposite the car. The blinking Christmas lights on the deli were out of place and out of season, an incongruous beacon in a part of the city the economic upswing had forgotten. A penumbra of light from the overhead sign cast its arc on the sidewalk out front. Beyond the light a homeless man lay huddled in his raggedy clothes and coat, sodden cardboard boxes draped over his inert form.

More inconspicuous than the 24-hour stand-alone bodega or the car with its rough-and-tumble looking inhabitants was the mobile blood van parked across from the store. A converted recreational vehicle, its windows were shaded even on this ray-less morning. Placards on its sides and rear identified the vehicle as a Red Crescent collection unit. A line of people waited outside the van, resigned in their queue, most without umbrellas. They were the homeless and the addicted, working girls, those down on their luck and bereft of hope, shivering in the wet and damp.

Periodically a door near the rear of the RV would open and one of those on line would stumble up to disappear inside, while a door near the front end disgorged another anonymous form into the rain. The people staggering away from the van clutched fistfuls of cash as they turned their heads down from the rain, stepping through the puddles that had filled the potholes in the street. Most of these bee-lined it straight across the street to the garish lights of the bodega. The line at the rear of the vehicle was a row that never diminished, stragglers attaching themselves to it in their ones and twos. There were always more people, few of them speaking to one another, some of them incoherent from alcohol, smack, and crack.

All of them waited their turn to trade red for green.

Inside the K-car the three men sat and watched, biding their time. Empty foam coffee cups and cigarette butts littered the interior.

You see that guy they pulled out of the river last week? Gossitch’s voice was like gravel from years of smoking. He had a big, crooked nose that looked like it had been broken a few times in all his years. Grizzled and older than the other two, he spoke to no one in particular. It was the first time any of the men had spoken in some time. There was gray in Gossitch’s short, curly hair. He was drumming the fingers of one hand on the steering wheel.

Yeah, that was some fucked-up shit. They called the tall, lean black man Santa-Anna. He had run with Gossitch years back. Santa Anna was a guy no one other than Gossitch or Bowie could vouch for, and both Gossitch and Bowie had vouched for him. For everyone else in his crew save one, Gossitch’s word was enough.

The newspapers said it might take some time to identify him.

Gossitch stroked his stubbly chin and made a mental note to shave as soon as he had a few minutes to do so, after this job was done and behind them. He wore a white gold band on the ring finger of his hand on the wheel. There had been a wife once.

Want to know why? he asked. Neither Santa Anna in the passenger seat next to him nor the hulking kid in the back replied, so he told them. Whoever did him in did him nasty. Took off his arms, legs. Ripped his jaw off, all his uppers too.

Santa Anna whistled. "Dismembered him and removed his jaw? Day-em."

Dismembered makes it sound clinical, like they sawed him up neat in some guy’s bath tub somewhere, Gossitch corrected. "That ain’t what happened. This guy’s limbs were torn off. His choppers too."

How they know he was a man? Genitals?

No, whoever done him took those off too…

Santa Anna pursed his lips and exhaled.

…they gendered him on account of his flat hairy chest.

Could have been a Mexican broad, Santa Anna joked. He thought it funny for a number of reasons, not least of which being he was back out on the streets now, hooked back in with his old crew chief, and they were already on a job earning. A job they were calling him Santa Anna on; Santa Anna the old Mexican general and all.

The young guy in the backseat, the man they called Boone, noted the way the black man called Santa Anna pronounced Mexican. Made the Mex sound like Mess. Messican. Sounded ignorant, thought Boone. Sounded, to the hulking young man in the back of the car, like a typical street nigger.

Santa Anna had been locked away long enough that what he thought was funny wasn’t what the other men necessarily thought was, and he knew it. These men, hard men like himself, they weren’t laughing. Who’d want to do that to another human being? he asked. He’d walked out of prison and onto the bus from upstate less than two weeks prior. Inside he’d seen and heard of some fucked up shit, from gang fights and shankings to crooked hacks and outright assassinations. Vamps had been inside too…that fucking thing, Enfermo. He’d promised himself he wouldn’t think about that thing.

But he’d never heard of anyone getting their arms and legs tore off.

Bloodsuckers would do that to a human being. Boone watched the van down the block intently through a pair of binoculars.

Santa Anna didn’t know what to make of the kid. He was younger than the rest of their crew, maybe in his mid-twenties. He seemed tight with the old man but kept eye-fucking Santa Anna. The kid was big as a house, all diesel and shit. Santa Anna figured Boone was trying for some pack dominance thing, or maybe all the ‘roids in his system were fucking with his psyche. Whatever. Santa Anna would live with him because he was part of Gossitch’s crew, but if the kid wanted to throw down, Santa Anna wouldn’t hesitate. Not for a second.

Nah, vamps don’t operate like that, Gossitch dismissed the comment. He was still drumming his fingers on the wheel. Sure, they’ll kill you, might even torture you some first if they think you got it coming to you. But they prefer to lay low, stay out of the limelight. That’s why we’re able to do what we do. You know that kid.

I get the impression Boone here don’t care much for the undead.

Boone don’t like too many people, period. Gossitch put fire to a Marlboro. Ain’t that right kid?

Boone made a noise that sounded like hurn. He continued staring out the windshield at the blood collection unit down the street.

So how they identifying that body from the river then? Santa Anna asked. He shifted the Ithaca Model 37 M pump shotgun from its place on his lap to between his legs, the twenty-inch barrel resting against the passenger side dash. For him to be found in a car with the shotgun and two other men packing fully automatic weapons was enough for the cops to drag his ass back to prison. Probably for good this time, too.

But Santa Anna didn’t sweat it. Gossitch had planned this job, which meant they weren’t likely to see any of the boys in blue. The Law tended to ignore this musty armpit of the city even when they weren’t paid to do so. Gossitch had it all under control.

Gritz says DNA testing, said the old man.

Ain’t that something, Santa Anna nodded. It wasn’t a question. Gritz was one of Gossitch’s contacts in the NYPD.

Sure is.

The rain pounded on the hood of the car.

After awhile Gossitch ground out his umpteenth cigarette and brought up his own pair of Zeiss binoculars. The line of people outside the blood unit wasn’t getting any shorter. He’d been around long enough not to buy into that whole there-but-for-the-grace-of-whoever-whatever bullshit. Gossitch didn’t feel particularly bad for the men and women lined up out there, a bunch of derelicts, drunks, and chicken heads, girls who would leave their two-year olds at home alone and go down on you in an alley for a fin, just to segue right back to the pipe.

No one had held a gun up to their heads and forced any of them to smoke rock or get knocked up when they were thirteen. They were human and they had made choices, and some of those choices had been bad choices, choices that had damned their lives. The sad ones had come to realize their past mistakes and how they were forced to live with them. The vast majority, the idiots, still didn’t get it. And now they stood here on this strangely chilly yet muggy summer morning as the rain refused to let up, standing and waiting to donate their blood for enough of a purse to afford themselves whatever poison they put into their bodies.

Rock. Smack. Heroin. Booze. It all answered the same hunger, thought Gossitch. Like his Marlboros.

He refocused his glass and saw that the homeless guy was still in his box a few buildings down from the bodega.

Goose, put on the radio or something, Boone requested from the backseat.

The kid was restless. The guy was a man of action, Gossitch knew, albeit often irrational, extremely violent action with little thought to the consequences. Especially where vamps and their ilk were concerned. Soon enough for that.

Gossitch turned the key in the ignition and the radio came on. He wasn’t worried about draining the battery. The car wasn’t theirs.

Some guy was rapping.

What’s this noise? asked Santa Anna.

Gangsta Khan, answered Boone. He’s big on the east coast.

Never heard of him. Santa Anna had done his time out in the Midwest and upstate. Federal. "When I went away guys on top of the game were EPMD, Big Daddy Kane, Erik B, and Rakim. What’s this bullshit? This nigga call that a hook? Freddy Foxx rapped for like five minutes without a break on The Master."

Method Man tears shit up for the same on his song, no hook, no break.

Method Man. That’s some bullshit there. Santa Anna shook his head. Put on ninety-two three, would ya Frank?

Give me a break, Gossitch exhaled a trail of smoke from a new smoke. I can’t listen to that crap since they switched to modern rock.

Okay. One-oh-four three then.

On the radio, Dave Herman was introducing a Smashing Pumpkins song.

What’s this modern rock bullshit anyway? asked Santa Anna. I go away and I come back and fucking Seattle has taken over rock and roll?

They call it alternative or somethin’, said Gossitch dismissively. Grunge.

Shit won’t last.

That’s what they said about rap, offered Boone.

Those guys look like their balls smell.

Three songs and a commercial break later, Marcy Playground were singing about a girl in platform double suede. Like disco lemonade.

Gossitch changed the station to CBS-FM. Hot town, summer in the city, the Lovin’ Spoonful sang, back of my neck getting dirty and gritty. Gossitch thought it appropriate, given the weather.

Po-pos, muttered Santa Anna. A police car was coming down the block form their east.

Gossitch stowed his binoculars under the front seat and felt for the keys in the ignition. Santa Anna reached over and killed the radio. In the back Boone slunk lower, his hands disappearing in the flannel of the jacket shirt he wore. The kid ignored the Colt SMG on the seat next to him.

If push came to shove they’d haul ass out of there. Gossitch wasn’t going to throw down with the law. His connections inside knew what he and his crew were about and they generally left him and his guys to do what they did. He suspected the men in the RV had their connections behind the blue wall too, which would help explain why in their three hours out here this was the first cruiser they’d seen.

The police car reached the corner and didn’t slow for the stop sign. It continued down the street. They watched its rear lights fade in the mist.

Gossitch turned the radio back on. Zager and Evans were singing about the year 2525.

A few moments later Santa Anna asked Gossitch, Those years I was away, you ever have to do a cop, Frank?

This caught Boone’s attention. Ever since he’d known the older man he’d known him as Gossitch. Of course he’d known Gossitch wasn’t the man’s real name, just like his wasn’t Boone. It was safer that way. He wouldn’t have thought that Frank was his crew chief’s name either. Figured Gossitch for some Jew-name, David or Benjamin or maybe even something super-Jewey like Chaim or Shlomo. But Frank? Fuckin’ Frank? Probably what Santa Anna called the old man, way back when.

Nuh-uh.

Not one? Not even a crooked one?

They’re all crooked. Gossitch flicked the butt of his cigarette out the window of the car. The kid’s come close on a couple of occasions, he said, making eye contact with Boone in the rear view mirror. But we always find a way to walk before that can happen. Right kid?

Boone didn’t answer.

Santa Anna turned around in the passenger seat so he could look at either Boone or Gossitch when he wanted. Just like old times. He shook his head. And what’s that heater you’re packing there, kid?

Heater, thought Boone. How long had this nappy-headed fuck been away for? It didn’t sit well with him, this fuck calling him kid. Gossitch could call him kid and that was alright. The old man had pulled Boone out of some serious shit in the past. Because of the old man, Boone was still breathing, had more money than he knew what to do with. He respected his crew chief and felt an attachment to him. Gossitch called him kid, it didn’t register as a slight.

That’s a Smith and Wesson .44 Mag, Gossitch answered for Boone, his eyes never leaving the RV. The kid’s partial to big bore revolvers.

Bit much for vamps, no? Santa Anna considered the 12-gauge Ithaca between his legs, the Glock 17 snug in his jeans against his belly. The shotgun had eight buckshot rounds in the tubular magazine and one ready to go in the chamber. Each shell was a mixture of double-ought silver slug and double-ought coated in silver. Boone and Gossitch carried Colt SMGs and every other round in their 32-round magazines had been silver-dipped, as was every round in the Glock 17s they wore.

The superstition that silver only killed werewolves was garbage. It did a number on vamps as well.

By way of an answer, Boone said: There’s more than bloodsuckers out there.

Yeah, but what the fuck are you looking to bring down with that thing? Hey, you know what? I don’t want to meet whatever it is you’re thinking of taking out with that piece.

The kid chose not to say anything. He didn’t owe Santa Anna an explanation.It wasn’t that Boone preferred heavy caliber six shooters or even had a preference for revolvers. He didn’t. But he’d run into something once that had made him wish he’d had the stopping power of the Smith M29. One of those times the old man had dragged his ass out of the frying pan. Though he feared little in this world, Boone knew he’d been lucky to walk away in one piece then. He figured he might cross paths with the thing or something like it again one day. And because he preferred to be ready for that occasion, should it ever materialize, he packed the .44.

The question of his marksmanship was an entirely different matter.

The rain had stopped hammering the car and fell in a steady, lulling cadence. The skies were overcast, the day washed out.

A blue and white Anthora cardboard coffee cup was wedged between the dash and the windshield. We are happy to serve you.

You ever known a bloodsucker to do that? The question woke Santa Anna some time later. Smoke from Gossitch’s Marlboros hung thick in the air. Santa Anna sat up in his seat and moved the Ithaca from where it had shifted, leaning against the door, to back between his legs.

A tall man had emerged from the front door of the RV and walked slowly and deliberately across the street towards the bodega. He was covered up with an expensive rain jacket and a wide brimmed boonie hat that obscured his face. It would have been difficult to see his face from this distance anyway. The man moved through the downpour in no apparent rush, and Santa Anna noted that his hands appeared to be gloved.

You ever known a bloodsucker to do that, Goose? Boone asked again.

No. Gossitch’s hand gripped the wheel. Light glinted off his wedding band. Never seen that before.

Maybe he’s not a full blood, offered Santa Anna. Maybe he’s just a slave?

Don’t know… Gossitch watched with the other two men as the lone figure disappeared inside the bodega. This crew working the blood drive, they don’t rely too much on humans.

Almost guaranteed when we go in there, Boone was referring to the RV, they’re all bloodsuckers.

Santa Anna thought that the kid sounded like he relished the idea.

But walk outside in the sun? mused Gossitch. Nah, vamps just don’t do that.

I don’t know, said Santa Anna. Not much sun to speak of. And he was covered up.

Fuck this. Boone opened the rear door of the car. He left his Colt SMG on the back seat. Only one way to tell.

You going to find out? asked Santa Anna.

Kid, try not to—

We go if I call it, okay? Boone closed the door behind him and walked off down the block towards the homeless man, towards the line of people outside the RV and the bodega.

Gossitch frowned and shook his head, cracking the window and tossing what remained of his cigarette.

Kids got a hard-on for vamps, remarked Santa Anna. As they watched, Boone strode down the street purposefully.

That he does, confirmed Gossitch. Kind of reminds me of the way someone else used to be.

That was a long time ago. Santa Anna thought of the way he’d been once, before prison, before the thing in it. Enfermo. Things were different now. Life has a way of tempering that shit…if you live long enough.

Tell you what though, Carter, said his friend. Shit hits the fan, there’s no one else you’d want to walk into hell with. Stick with that kid, you’re likely to walk back out. Even if he detours to kick a little red ass.

I’d ask if he can be trusted. But I know if he runs with your crew, I don’t gotta ask.

He’s thinking the same thing about you, replied Gossitch, depressing the talk button on his walkie talkie. All eyes on Boone. We go on Boone’s call.

2.

5:03 A.M.

Bowie didn’t respond on his radio because he was down on the street in his soaked rags under the sagging cardboard boxes, disguised as a homeless man. His ear piece masked by the stained woolen cap he wore. Answering a radio call would only draw unwanted attention to his person.

He shifted his weight inside the cardboard box. He’d been camped out here overnight, watching the RV. Occasionally he’d catch a cramp and have to straighten out an arm or leg. It hadn’t been comfortable, but he knew when the dawn came they’d do what they’d come to do, and then it would all be worth it.

Bowie had watched the tall cloaked man leave the trailer and cross through the rain to the bodega. Something hadn’t been right about that shit. Bowie wasn’t able to make out any of the guy’s features from where he lay inside his box, not without making it obvious he was scoping the dude. All he’d been able to tell from where he lay was that the guy was extremely tall, was covered up, and there was definitely something nasty about him. Was it a vampire? And how could that be, a vampire out here in the morning like this, even if it wasn’t much of a morning with the rain and all?

Boone swaggered down the block, in his work boots and baggy jeans, flannel jacket shirt pulled closed. Bowie watched him and wondered where Boone was going. He sure wasn’t heading for the RV.

And then Bowie had it. Boone was going to stroll right into the bodega behind the guy from the RV, check dude out.

Shit. Bowie had to shake his head and snicker because that took balls. And if this was a crew of vamps they had staked out, what kind of vamp came strolling out into the day, even an overcast day like this one? Something they’d never seen before. And there was Boone, going to check it out.

Nah, thought Bowie, the tall guy wasn’t a vamp. Probably just one of their slaves.

Still…

When Boone passed his box Bowie held out his hand and muttered something. Anyone watching would have thought he’d asked for money.

What he’d said was Man the fuck up.

The look on Boone’s face, thought Bowie. Like a kid heading down the stairs on Christmas morning to see what Santa had left under the tree. Fuck. He had an idea where this was going, and it wasn’t anyplace good.

Bowie gathered his army surplus blanket around himself and over his shoulder, concealing the Colt SMG muzzle down, taut on its sling pressed against his side. His cut-down assault rifle was loaded with a 20-round magazine, which made it easier to conceal out on the street.

He sat up on the sidewalk and watched as Boone walked into the bodega, then he stood slowly and purposefully limped towards the end of the line of people outside the RV.

3.

5:04 A.M.

He’s just going to walk in there like that, huh? It sounded like a question, but Santa Anna was talking aloud to himself and Gossitch