The Long Nights: Joe Kellerman, #1

By Tom Mock

#1 Bestseller in Contemporary Fantasy and Vampire Thriller!

 

A cry of pain, hard and desperate, tore through Carthage City one night …

The Nightwalker Killings: bodies drained and tucked away in the abandoned corners of Carthage City Oldtown. The oddity of their stalled decay was a mystery … until the latest victim woke in a fury of teeth and claws.

Joe Kellerman, a young telepath working with a group of occult "Specialists," finds himself face to face with the vampire known as the Nightwalker—at least, what's left of him. To stop the vampire's contagion of death from spreading, Joe searches the killer's memories to find his missing victims before any more wake to feed.

But as an alluring photojournalist with a history of blackmail starts to suspect his involvement in the Nightwalker case, Joe is stretched thin between past mistakes and his search for the missing, where every face he sees is a life seemingly doomed to a bad end. Maybe that's why he keeps having visions of a girl in yellow sneakers from the killer's past—the fleeting hope that someone made it out alive.

Is there anyone left to save, or has Joe finally gone too far into the dark to find his way out again?

 

• Amazon, Kobo, & Barnes and Noble Bestseller
• Self-Published Fantasy Blog Off 8 Semi-Finalist
• Indies Today Awards: Runner-Up in Horror
• Best Setting - Indie Ink Awards (nominated)
• Best Morally Gray Character - Indie Ink Awards (nominated)

 

 

 

PRAISE FOR THE LONG NIGHTS!

"Inventive, clever, unique in its meticulousness and maturity... Mock has a masterful grasp on language. Delightfully strange and intoxicatingly dangerous... a dark world of psychological thrills."
― RC Gibson, Indies Today

"Hard to put down. ... An interesting blend of magic, worldbuilding, complex but believable characters, and engrossing themes ... that makes for great horror-fantasy."
― PL Stuart, author of The Drowned Kingdom Saga, for Before We Go Blog

"A great protagonist ... Mock has a deft hand at dialogue."
― Ryan Howse, author of Red in Tooth and Claw, for Before We Go Blog

"This book is as solid as a diamond! And as brilliant, too."
― Douglas Lumsden, author of A Troll Walks Into A Bar

"Atmospheric and deliciously dark."
― Peter Hartog, author of Bloodlines

"A slow-burn creepy noir-fest ... It's brilliant and it's dark and it's poetic and it's addictive, and boy, is some of the writing here simply astonishing for a debut. I fell headfirst into this moody read in a way I rarely do."
― EL Crocker, author of Lightfall

"Brooding, ominous and intricate ... expertly builds to a fantastic climax with twists and turns around every corner."
― Michael Delaney, Wolfmantula(dot)com

"A fresh take on the genre ... This is a dark urban fantasy you want to get your hands on and sink your teeth into."
― Jay Requard, author of The Salt Songs

"Visceral and deeply emotional ..."
― from Goodreads

"This book raised the bar on dark urban fantasy for me - it has everything I want from a story ... I found myself completely immersed."
― from Goodreads

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tom Mock
• Release date: Jan 15, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224749300

Book preview

THE LONG NIGHTS

Tom Mock

Indies Today Award: 2021 Runner-Up in Horror badge

Delightfully strange and intoxicatingly dangerous … Mock has a masterful grasp on language … a bold novel … a dark world of psychological thrills.

– Indies Today

SPFBO Semi-Finalist Fantasy Book Award 2022 badge

Hard to put down … A great protagonist … a deft hand at dialogue … Great horror-fantasy.

– PL Stuart & Ryan Howse, Before We Go Blog

This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, places, and events are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

THE LONG NIGHTS

Copyright © 2019 by Tom Mock

Edited by Katie Pegram

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner without the express written permission of the author except for the use of quotations in a book review.

Second Edition, 2021

Cover art by Chris Shehan

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Acknowledgements

This book never would have existed without Kris Koechling and Katie Pegram. It started in Kris’s office with his encouragement and finished only and eventually because of Katie’s thorough and repeated critiques. She’s contributed more to this story and my writing than anyone.

Special thanks to my early readers for their guidance and support. They are Michael DeProspero, Christina DeProspero, Adam Whaley, Dennis Mohr, Peter Healy, Michelle Mebust, Eva Rubin, Tania Trbovich, Josh Sperati, Eric Short, and even Dave Mackie, Michael Holland, Brenna Leath, Kyle Gallagher, Kori Lane, and Jessica Golden.

It was always night for him now. Always cold, except when the rush came. He waited in the dark, crocodile still in the blind angle beneath a fire escape. He could not move for hours, a part of the shadow, cigarette smoke the only sign he was there, turning the knife in his pocket. There was meaning in the way the edge cut, something like life.

Murmurs at the border of his awareness: cars on the street, a radio in a window, electric Spanish chatter. A car door slammed, and a woman’s voice carried through the hush. It was a vibrant voice. He stirred, found her as she told the driver off, black and blue hair hanging down one side of her young face. The out-of-line john pulled off the curb, exhaust smogging the street, and she emerged, high shorts, jacket fringe mirroring the subtle movement of her hair.

He could feel the rush coming. He followed.

She looked back, but he was a shape in the dark, just her imagination. Reaching out, he pushed her down city side-streets, like a whisper in her ear driving her towards the appointed place, to the maze where she would run.

The sky opened, more October drizzle. Breathing hard now, lost, the shadows closing in, her heart beat in both their ears. She was going to run too soon. He couldn’t push her anymore. He closed the distance. She whirled around, hair dancing, and he put his arms around her.

Stay, he breathed into her hair, and she did.

*

2:00 am, but with the station lights on in perpetuity there was no day, no night, just work. Special Cases Detective Stanley Hopkins, short strawed to Zombie Squad detail and bone tired, filled a cup of stale coffee. The scream and the shriek of metal from the morgue stopped the cup at his lips, stopped time. A crash started it again, and he saw Lt. Detective Hendrix sprinting down the hallway, reaching for the gun on her hip, calling out to the new Medical Examiner, Ruby!

The body on Ruby’s slab, brought in less than an hour ago, was part of a growing set sent down to Morgue 2 of Carthage Central Station. They were sick-o knife jobs, females carved, drained, and tucked away. The oddity of their stalled decay made it second basement work, but Hendrix, on site to collect the latest, had cautioned this one was strange. Hopkins had pulled the deep sleeping M.E. Peter Ruby out of bed personally. A top-of-his-class graduate, Ruby was too young to be a part of the freakshow, still bright-eyed and duty driven. Ruby was screaming now—screams cut short.

Shouldn’t have left him alone. Hopkins’s mistake was sleep-debt driven, but it was too late now. Leaden exhaustion melted off him in the adrenaline surge as he rounded into the hall, coffee a mess on the floor. The inhuman roar Hendrix was charging towards was shotgun work for sure. Hopkins was moving and thinking at the same time, but his mouth was glued shut, no space in his mind to shout off Hendrix’s bull-rush. That there was no chance of her listening was his only consolation.

Remingtons were across the hall, always loaded. Armed, Hopkins ran hard, but not fast enough. There were shots, Hendrix yelling, and then the embalming fluid stink as Hopkins burst through the morgue door barrel first into hell. Wailing-roaring, the gargoyle mass was gray-white in the medical spotlights as it rag-dolled Hendrix. Her errant shot took out one of the lights. No way to miss Hendrix—split second decision—hold the shot, push in. If it was another mistake, they were all dead and the monster was loose in the building. Hendrix went down backwards, the thing riding her down, showing Hopkins ribs under paper-thin skin.

He shot point blank—blam! The shotgun kick disentangled what had been their victim from Hendrix. It dragged itself on the floor, claws slipping on the old tile, a raw hole punched in one side, no slop, too little blood. Muscle memory worked the pump as Hopkins walked the ghoul down. Blam-shuck-blam-shuck.

No more scrambling, part of the thing’s head was gone. Assess. Peter Ruby like a broken doll on the floor, blue eyes staring dead. He looked younger with his glasses gone. Blue scrubs a mess, gutted, throat gone. Hopkins kept moving.

Hendrix blinked fast, breathing blood bubbles. Hopkins dropped the twelve-gauge, scooped Hendrix under the arms and realized as he dragged her that either a ricochet or one of those claws had gone through his thigh. Once Hendrix’s legs cleared the seam of the door, he pounded the red alert lock. Emergency lights danced, and a steel plate slammed across the door. The submarine port hole was layered plastic, blast tested, bulletproof.

Down on his hands and knees, Hopkins ripped his shirt off and pressed it to the puncture wounds in Hendrix’s chest. She gasped, choked, feeling it now. His mouth unglued.

Hold on, Clara. Hold on. Just try to breathe.

The alarm bleated. She dropped her gun and her damp fingers twisted in his undershirt. She was looking at him but not seeing him. The long hallway of basement level two was still empty. Dead legged, he couldn’t carry her. Louder than ever before, Hopkins shouted, Somebody!

1

The press of the overcrowded club. The thumping erratic energy of a jazz quartet. Discordant improvisations on a forgotten theme. Playing cards with the band in the lull between sets. Their derisive talk like another language, spirited, immediate, totally unconcerned, and none of it could reach me. I was too aware of who I wasn’t with to enjoy any of it.

I left the card game with the Blue Room musicians after losing fifty dollars to the trumpet player. He’d been bluffing, and I knew it, but my heart wasn’t in the game.

Can’t win ’em all, Joe. Better luck next time.

The parting shot landed like insight.

I'd been idling without contact from my employer for too long, no investigations to distract me, nothing to do but think about the cracks in my life. Even as I climbed the stairs to my apartment like a sad kid, I was hoping the person I wasn’t with would change her mind—that she wouldn't be able to sleep, as sometimes happened, and would call to ask me over, and everything would come together again, smooth and easy, at least for a little while.

When my phone rang, I was sure it was her, and with a head like mine, when I’m sure about things, they tend to be so. I answered saying her name and that I was there—but she wasn’t.

Do you need me to call back? asked my boss, Marv.

My heart sank and I stood there feeling exposed and not saying anything.

Marv pressed on smoothly after a brief pause, saying, I won’t say ‘answer to the contrary at your peril,’ but might I suggest you come down and have a drink? At your earliest convenience, I mean. Within the hour, I would have said when I called, oh, I suppose about an hour ago.

I’m on my way, I said, because it was the only thing I could say, and then my time was not my own.

Riding my motorcycle through City Central, going numb from the cold, I steered towards Marv’s place with the same mechanical thoughtlessness that I shifted gears, the whole way over imagining the call I wish I’d gotten, pretending I was driving in the other direction, toward Cathy’s, living another life—the knock on the door, the wordless embrace, everything written in our eyes—but then I arrived and I had to sit on my bike for a long cold minute before I went inside. The job came before everything else, though, always, which I knew was the beginning and the end of the problem.

Marv’s place was a bar and grill he owned on 41st Street creatively named Marvins Place. The apostrophe was missing from the sign out front as well. A restaurateur posing as a private investigator of sorts, or maybe the other way around, Marv’s business card read, simply, Specialist. Marv looked different on paper. Respectable, even. Everyone in his hand-picked outfit did, even me.

It was after hours at the restaurant. The lights were lowered, and the chairs were stacked on the tables. Marv, a ruddy-haired conjurer from the secret traditions of a bygone age, waited for me slouched at a table with his arms crossed and his chin on his chest. He was dressed smartly in his usual witchdoctor black, and the table was set for two with an open bottle of wine, and even a candle for romantic atmosphere.

I threw my jacket on the bar, but he didn’t look up, so I helped myself to the wine. It was a full-bodied Argentine red, an odd choice, but I guessed the vino meant Marv was celebrating.

The wine might not have been full-bodied at all really. Ask a stray dog about wine before me.

You approve? Marv asked without opening his eyes.

Mmm. Toothsome but fibrous. Like eating a sofa, I said. What am I doing here?

Janis was killed last night.

The wine caught in my throat. What? How? Is she dead?

Not at all. I had Medic along for the job.

When were you planning on telling me about this?

I just did.

Thanks for keeping me up to speed. So, what happened?

I told you, Janis was killed. Marv couldn’t stop a grin cracking through his goatee.

His sarcasm told me that although some job must have gone terribly wrong, they’d managed to pull Janis back from the brink, and now Marv was either basking in his hard-won victory or the relief of a total catastrophe averted. Thus, the wine.

I drank to clear my throat, and Marv got on with it.

You’re aware of the latest unrest in the city, yes? he asked.

Can you be more specific? It’s a noisy city.

Would it mean anything to you if I said the body of a young woman was found a month ago in early October? That she had been missing since mid-September, and that she was in a miserable state when found, but the time of death was difficult to determine in part due to a lack of telltale larvae? At first, her death was deemed a horrible anomaly, yet another terrible, tragic act of violence, forgettable for everyone but those close to the victim and those who saw the remains. But then another body was discovered, and a pattern of violence emerged. Although the Authority has suppressed network coverage and focused the discussion on gang violence, the papers are another story. There are even a handful of crime scene snapshots making the rounds. Ringing any bells?

I remembered scanning the article at my usual coffee shop. A slice of brutality, it referred to the deaths as the nightwalker killings even though only the first victim was a confirmed prostitute. I’d have kept closer tabs on stories like that if I didn’t think Marv already had them pinned to a wall or glued in book. The punched-up writing was tabloid junk posing as clinical fact. Walking a line for most the article, an allusion to Jack the Ripper exposed the two-bit journalist for what he was. The facts were that three young women had gone missing, separately and at night, and their bodies hadn’t been found until weeks later, stashed in some abandoned corner of Oldtown. No witnesses, no leads.

And then there was the cry of pain, hard and desperate, that tore through Carthage City one night when I was out on my bike trying to clear my head. I pulled over on an overpass and stared west into the old city, straining to hear anything more, trying to feel where the sound had come from, but everything went still.

I just know what I’ve read, I said to Marv, simplifying. Some carved up dead girls. Some bad vibes. Where does Janis fit in?

Marv tugged on his short beard, a faint twinkle lighting his eyes. I read his look.

You’ve got to be kidding me. Janis? How the hell did she get herself … Oh. Bait. You went hunting with Janis as bait.

He made a little bow with his head and hand.

And you got her killed.

There are always risks, Marv said levelly. I might have brought you if I imagined you could suddenly divine every danger, but three was as many as I calculated I could get away with. At least we were not unprepared.

In Marv’s specialist toolkit, Janis was a sledgehammer. She was a powerhouse with hands that cut steel. The disaster it would take to overwhelm her must have been a bloodbath, Janis surprised, outnumbered, fighting for her life separated from the others. I was glad at least Medic had been there.

How many were there? I asked.

Just the one.

One? And he took out Janis? Our Janis?

Marv nodded grimly. I made note of the case after the second victim was found, but my attention at the time was occupied by some research into preservation, as luck would have it. I didn’t become officially involved until after the discovery of the third victim. An incident at the Special Cases morgue persuaded the Authority to reach out.

What kind of incident?

The third victim woke up. The body was in an even less deteriorated state than the others. As the Medical Examiner started his post-mortem, he unfortunately discovered why. He was killed, and a Special Cases detective was seriously injured before the unfortunate wretch was brought down. After that, special precautions were taken with the other remains.

He drew a line across his throat, and a chill like lying on a cold steel slab passed over me—that smell of disinfectant and the constricting darkness of a metal drawer. I was suddenly aware of how quiet it was in the restaurant.

A fourth victim was discovered in Whitehall on the second night of our hunt, though not by us. I shifted the area we were baiting accordingly, and we made contact late last night. That’s the long and short of it.

What is it we’re dealing with, then?

You can’t guess? Add it up. He wanted to test if I could ask the right questions and make the same deductions he had, but seeing I wasn’t in the mood for guessing games, he said, I’ll give you a hint, courtesy of our friends at the papers. The name they’ve pinned on him, ‘The Nightwalker,’ is at least dramatically appropriate.

A vampire?

Yes, though now what we’re dealing with is much worse. He waved his hand and stood up. I’ll show you in a moment.

Marv took his empty glass around the bar, and I rubbed my eyes. He was making my head hurt, but it wasn’t only him. I decided to ask a better question.

How’s Janis doing?

Well enough, considering. I’ve put her on short rest at home for the time being. You and I have our own task to address in the meantime, provided I have everything figured right.

I watched his face in the bar mirror as he washed his glass, but Marv was hard to read at the best of times. Even his age was a mystery. Whether he looked forty or sixty depended on if he were standing straight with that wild light of ambition in his eye or bowed at the hard end of a row of sleepless nights.

He looked tired but determined now, off in his own thoughts, but if he was hopeful, cautious, shaken, or eager about our task, I couldn’t sense it—nothing but cold calculation. Good thing he didn’t play cards.

Actually, it would be altogether better if that was how Marv gambled, with cards, and only with cards.

Considering the details of the Nightwalker case, the one thing I could say for certain was from here, it would be all bad, like a long tunnel going down and down through the dark, waiting for the next terrible scream, dreading it, and wanting it to hurry up and happen despite what that would mean.

Suddenly, I wasn’t in any hurry either.

Shall we? Marv asked, toweling his hands, and I got up, but when I reached for my jacket, he said, I’m afraid you won’t be needing that.

The basement?

He smiled, and I leaned against the bar in disappointment.

You know, Marv—

Yes, he said, he’s a very handsome, intelligent man.

I let it go. If I had to be on the job, I wanted to stay busy hitting the pavement in the open air where it would be easy not to think about, well, everything, but there was no use arguing.

From the kitchen, we went down into the stale air of the basement, and the harshness of the naked bulb hanging from a floor joist didn’t do anything for my head. There were three doors at the bottom of the stair, one in each direction, north, west, and east.

The frame of the west door was carved with glyphs, sealing the place from more than just prying eyes, an extra precaution beyond what Marv had installed throughout the building. I followed him through to a room that was a laboratory, witch’s hovel, archive, workshop, and morgue all rolled into one. It was always bigger than I expected, and sometimes I even thought it changed sizes.

Mostly there were books. There wasn’t a single wooden work bench or shelf without some faded, creased, or stained old volume. Under and between the books was chemistry equipment, scales and measuring weights, surgical instruments, and other strange devices. Three different sized hourglasses were arranged by the door, one of which was running now, the sand changing from gold to black as it fell. Stuffed somewhere in there alongside the urns and tight-lidded jars of awful preserves, I bet there was even Marv’s taxes.

To Marv, the room was simply his study.

What’s the game? I asked, squinting against the yellow bulbs. Filter evidence, look for traces? I take it you’ve found something I can use.

I think so.

What’s that?

Joseph Kellerman, meet Adrian Lange. With a sweeping gesture, Marv stepped aside to reveal a severed head.

The head was that of a younger man, twenty to thirty, though what was left of him made it hard to tell. There were mottled clumps of hair stuck to the sections of his scalp that were still intact. Bones and sharp teeth showed through on the side of his face where the skin had been burnt entirely away, the flesh black and puckered. One eye was ruined. The other eye was fiercely blue.

The dead eyes stared at me, then shifted to Marv and back again. For a moment, I was not sure what I was looking at.

The Nightwalker, I said.

"Theee Night-walk-err," said Marv, hands clasped behind his back, rocking a little on his feet. He gauged my reaction.

But I thought you said Janis …

She is, of course, very persistent, Marv explained. Our dear Adrian here was far more dangerous than I anticipated, there’s no doubt about that. He would have gotten away, except that Janis was hardly what he expected either. It won’t be the last time she’s underestimated, I’m happy to say. She even managed not to destroy his brain, enabling this singular interview.

Marv brushed a wisp of hair clinging to what remained of the head’s scalp.

He’s something, isn’t he? he asked.

The head’s eyes continued to shift between us, and I could feel it in my gut what he was.

You really want me to answer that?

No, what I want now is for us to get started. Marv checked the running hourglass and rifled the contents of a roll-top desk. The vampire is dead, but that is only the end of the beginning. Although we’ve removed the source, the contagion of death is still spreading, and other than telling me his name, our killer has been singularly resistant to divulging any of his exploits, and my spell is fading. Our window with him is closing. We cannot risk half-measures. Ah, here it is.

Marv took a wooden jewelry box from the desk, and I realized he had been working on me from the moment I arrived. His easy manner, the wine, slowly building to the point, it all lead to this moment and what he was about to ask me.

He said, Do you think you could …?

No.

Marv stopped, still looking into the box. The question hung in the air, his silence only asking it all the louder. I could feel the noose sliding past my ears.

I’m not digging around in some monster’s head, I said.

Marv snapped the little box shut. You were not so reluctant the last time this was necessary.

You’re going to throw that in my face? You’re going to bring that up like you think I forgot about it?

I didn’t mean to suggest—

"That has nothing to do with this, and you know it. I— I checked myself before I got any hotter and lowered my voice. There’s no comparison between them. This is, it’s …"

Looking at the head, words failed me.

One in four, Marv said.

What?

A fledgling vampire wakes in a building with steel doors and armed men, and the result is death and destruction. How much worse will it be when another wakes in some dark corner of the city? How many more bodies will there be then? One in four, Joe. And that’s only among the victims found so far, with no way of knowing how many are left. Well, this is our way of knowing. This is our way of finding them before it’s too late. In that regard, I’d say the comparison is quite clear.

I felt like the room was closing in on me.

Joe, I need your help.

I turned my back on him.

We have to see this through to the end, Marv went on, or it will be as if he were still out there, indulging himself. As unsavory as it is—

I’ve got it already.

Marv was quiet. There was a glass jar on the table in front of me filled with what looked like a load of translucent tadpoles. They twitched and glowed faintly off and on. I flicked the jar and the things inside jumped as one body against the glass.

Careful, Marv said.

What are they?

Painful.

I watched the little painfuls settle back into place, seemingly lifeless once again. Marv had me and he knew it. I hated what he was asking me to do, hated everything about it, but I would do it because I owed him, even after all this time, and I would do it because, in the end, he was right.

You know what you’re asking me?

I do, he said. And I’m sorry there’s no other way.

I made the mistake of looking over his shoulder at the vampire’s head. His eyes were fixed on me, and I felt the panic grip my heart, just for a second, as I imagined what I was about to do to myself. I have a horribly vivid imagination, but I never could have guessed just how bad it would turn out to be.

2

When a fledgling vampire wakes for the first time, their only instinct is to kill. Everything else has been taken from them. It is more than a bloodlust; their bodies ache with death, and they can eat very little before they are sick, but their thoughts burn with the fever of killing. They kill whatever they can catch, leaving carcasses to spoil, sleeping and killing until they have fed enough to slip from the madness of what they have become into cold awareness. After this, they are never the same.

I was about to perform the psychic equivalent of getting into bed with what came out the other side of that transformation. I would never be ready.

Joe, Marv prompted.

Okay. I said it a few times to myself. Okay. Okay, Joe. Okay.

I studied my hands in my lap, the scar through my right palm, whiter than the skin around it. Finally, I looked at the vampire's mangled face, his head served up in front of me like a botched Thanksgiving dinner.

Maybe I could find one, I said. Maybe, but there’s no way I could find them all.

You don't have to find the victims now. All you have to do is look for them. Open the connection and maintain it. I'll do the rest.

How long?

As long as you can. I’ve seen it done before, but not quite like this. The binding spell shouldn’t interfere, but we’ll get to find out together.

Great.

I slowed myself down, taking deep breaths, thinking of less and less until I was thinking of nothing. I opened my eyes, or maybe just focused them, and Marv was gone. His room was gone. My world condensed until it was just me in my chair and the head on the table.

And a black candle I hadn't noticed before, burning behind him. Why hadn’t it—I pushed the thoughts aside before they could pull me off course and continued to follow the mental signposts I had