Nightblind

By Tori Swann

Austin is a serial killing photographer who thinks he's a vampire. Or at least he wishes he could be one.... He lures a bevy of beauties to his studio where he bites their necks and takes gory after-death photos of them. But when he meets a real vampire he finds out what it is like to be on the other end of the food chain...

• Language: English
• Publisher: Trellis Publishing
• Release date: Jul 3, 2021
• ISBN: 9798201439989

Book preview

NIGHTBLIND

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TORI SWANN

TABLE OF CONTENTS

NIGHTBLIND

KILLERS AT SUNDOWN

TRAILER PARK EVIL

KILLING VAN HELSING

POST MORTEM THOUGHTS

KIDNAP CLUB

Someone Like Me

As Austin Kline kneeled on the floor with his camera in his hand and looked up at Charlotte, if that was her real name, with her perfect body and her drug-ravaged eyes, he thought about whether he should try cooking her.

No, he thought. Vampires don’t cook. It’s not about the meat.

It’s about the blood.

Just lift that arm a little, he said, pointing.

Like this?

The moonlight shone through the large window which overlooked the Detroit river. They were high enough to not be able to see the trash floating in the dirty brown water. The moonlight gave Charlotte an otherworldly glow. Austin thought her a rather base creature, selected more for her low status and her lack of family than her appearance. The light was perfect once a month and he couldn’t go without his pictures. Detroit had nothing going for it but the anonymity. There was nothing else left in this city but for the dredges of society, the unemployed, the hopeless, those who would not be missed. Austin had made a name for himself across the country, just-turned thirty and with a number of high-profile clients paying six-figure sums to make their shoes or their sunglasses look as glamorous as possible, but he had been returning to Detroit once a month for over a year now.

Ever since the dreams intensified.

His heart didn’t belong to Detroit – he grew up down the road in Toledo, but felt no ties to the region – but it yearned for the hunt. He had achieved something approaching greatness already, but he knew there was more. He knew he was better than all of it.

What’s wrong? Charlotte said, covering her breasts. Is everything OK?

She caught him daydreaming. Damn, he thought.

Everything’s fine, Austin said. Why don’t you get comfortable and we’ll do a couple more and then we’re done, OK?

Charlotte smiled nervously and nodded. The way she covered herself as she sat up on the couch and took a sip of her rum and coke, it stoked something approaching pity in Austin. He saw her for what she was in that moment. At the strip club, she was all front, all show. She had been made offers like this a hundred times before. Just a few photos, he’d told her, but she’d probably have sex with him if he paid enough. She was a girl in hiding, he could see it now, in the way her eyes took in the room at this moment, wondering what was to come, wondering how she had fallen so far. She was young enough to need the money while still being able to dream about a better future. Charlotte wanted to be happy. He could see it in her nervous smile. She wanted to be left alone. The drugs and the drink, they were the only way she could feel like she was apart from her situation. It made a small wave of sympathy rise up in Austin.

He took her photograph as she sipped her drink and he knew he wouldn’t have the heart to develop the picture.

Hey, Charlotte said, giggling, I wasn’t ready.

Sorry, Austin said, with a smile.

He dismissed any sympathy.

This isn’t right, Austin told himself. I’m not like you. I’m not one of you. I’m something else.

Austin stood and went over to his desk in the corner of his small studio. He put the camera down and looked at his reflection in the mirror screwed to the wall in front of him. The studio had a desk, a sofa, a few old chairs and the big window, and that was it. Its walls were bare brick and its floors clean floorboards. The trendy apartments had been created out of a refurbished warehouse.

From out of the drawer Austin took his fangs.

The dreams had come to him slowly at first, a collection of seemingly unconnected snapshots of Colonial America: forests, battles, bloody encounters in dark rooms by candlelight. Eventually, he developed a sense of his surroundings and the snapshots were easier to connect and slot into a vague geography. After a time, he began to get a sense of the self who was in these moments. It was a stronger self, a very different self. It was a hungry self.

Austin looked in the mirror to make sure Charlotte wasn’t looking at him. She had walked over to the window to look out at the city. He pushed his custom-made fangs up into his mouth and fixed them in tight. Two razor-sharp points protruded from the row of his normal teeth. He had two of his teeth replaced with false ones and fitted with small indents which could fit his custom fangs. A dentist with the sufficient skill wasn’t hard to find – dentists in California, especially, were used to all sorts of requests – but it had taken some convincing. Twenty thousand dollars later, however, he had himself a set of detachable fangs. He had to be careful when they were in that he didn’t cut himself, but they felt right. He smiled at himself in the mirror and they looked right, too.

One day, he thought, maybe I’ll look into this mirror and see nothing.

The mirror was backed with silver, as they traditionally had been. None of this cheap aluminium-backed modern rubbish. It was the silver element which meant his dream-self had no reflection. His dream-self, his old self, was a vampire. This much he knew.

This much he wanted once again.

It’s pretty up here, Charlotte said.

Austin’s sympathy for her was pushed deep down.

She’s food, he told himself. The wolf feels no sympathy for the deer.

He closed his mouth and turned to her.

You want to take some more pictures? Charlotte said, turning to him, holding her drink in one hand and covering her breasts with the other.

Later, Austin said.

Charlotte looked almost disappointed. She had been in this situation before. The pictures weren’t enough. They never were. She knew what he wanted now.

At least, she thought she did.

Austin slowly unbuttoned his shirt. Charlotte saw and glanced away. She looked down at the city and pretended not to see as he undressed fully. He walked to her. As Austin’s hands touched the skin on the side of her face and brushed her hair aside, he felt himself filling up with the spirit of his former self. Charlotte chuckled and shied away.

I knew you wanted more than photographs, she said. I’m not sure I...

I want more, Austin said.

She looked nervous. She would ask for more money. They always do. Some are coy and some are upfront, but that is what they need. They are thinking of their survival.

And they should, he thought. But not like that.

Austin smiled at her. He smiled wide. In his reflection in the window he saw the gleam of his fangs. Charlotte saw them too. There was no confusion. There was no surprise. He could tell from the way her face fell that she jumped straight to terror. Consumed by it, her body seemed to stop working as she stumbled backwards, her back thumping against the glass.

Trying to speak, she held out a hand to keep him away, but the fear had drained what little strength she had. Austin took her wrist and pulled it aside. He stepped in close and pressed his body against hers.

Who-? she began.

Not who, Austin said. What.

He opened his mouth and grabbed her by the hair. He pulled her head to the side and a short scream was silenced as he pressed his fangs into her jugular. He felt his mouth flood with her warm blood and he locked his jaw down hard on her flesh, the fangs slicing through. He felt her muscles part beneath the pressure.

He felt her come apart between his teeth.

The thrashing and the crying and the surprise lasted only a moment as she fell, dragging him to the floor with her. His entire body warmed as her blood sprayed across his naked skin. Charlotte’s limbs and head flailed in all directions, but there was no unlocking Austin’s fangs from her throat. Blood rushed into his mouth and he swallowed greedily.

In no time at all, the massive blood loss and the shock of the pain sent Charlotte into unconsciousness, a sleep from which she would never wake up as her blood drained over Austin’s body and onto the floor.

When the death throes stopped and the blood slowed, Austin stood. He saw his reflection overlaid on the view of the river and the city lights below. Blood dripped from his face and was smeared across his chest. He took deep breaths and smiled at himself. He smiled at the old self he felt inside, and he could feel it smiling back.

I am not a who, Austin thought. I am a what.

He wiped the blood from his mouth.

I am a vampire.

He washed his hands clean, loaded a new film into his camera, and documented his act of vampirism. He photographed Charlotte’s horror, her wounds and her lifelessness.

When he was done, he began to collect the blood.

Austin was satisfied.

His old self was satisfied.

Charlotte’s perfect body began to grow cold.

*

The photographs of Charlotte had become tiresome. The memory of her blood filling his mouth had begun to lose its lustre. It had been two months since her murder and, as Austin had hoped, no-one had come looking for her. His apartment building came with a private elevator and underground parking and, as a result, he was able to dispose of her dismembered body in Lake St Clair in a sports back filled with rocks from the shore. There, she would lie with the others, existing only now in his imagination as he replayed the scene of her death over and over, making himself more powerful in each retelling.

Tonight’s the night, he thought.

The need had slowly risen in him once again. The dreams, at first calmer and quieter after Charlotte, had become louder and more urgent. He saw his old self clearly now, killing and drinking and laughing, and the urges returned in his waking hours. When he woke he felt the residue of the power he had in his dreams. He knew they were memories of what he had been, of what he could be again. The urges returned stronger than ever. They intruded on his daily life, made him distracted and irritable and woke him in the night.

This one has to be special, he told himself. This girl has to be right. She has to be worthy of me.

The strip clubs held nothing for him. The women were all of a type, all older and with their desperation long-since locked into their personality. Austin wanted someone with hope, a woman with life left in her veins. What was the point in taking a life, he thought, if you were robbing her of something that she had given up on anyway? Austin needed to take something of value. He didn’t want a two-time divorcee with a drug habit, estranged children and more vodka in her veins than blood. He craved vitality, someone who would genuinely fear for her life, who had a future of some kind to cling to.

That’s when he started patrolling the bus station and youth hostels.

It was the last night of the full moon when a girl caught his eye. At first, she just looked like a bundle of rags left under a bench. Then, he saw the bundle shift, and he made out the legs tucked up to a body and the arms wrapped around. As he pulled over and turned off his engine across the street, he saw a young face peer up from under a hood. A sliver of blonde hair fell across her face and she brushed it aside and looked around, wide-eyed and terrified.

It was her.

She was the one.

She had the fear of someone who was new to the street. Sleeping in the open like that, Austin thought, she must have been completely inexperienced. She couldn’t have been more than twenty years old. The bus shelter was a block away. Maybe she just got here,