Blood-Lines

Part 4

There were fewer bodies laid out on the street and several boxes that patiently waited for pickup when they passed through the doors of the Agarose.

Tables and chairs lay overturned and broken, spread haphazardly around the room, while broken glass crunched beneath their feet as they walked through the mess.

Poe stopped at one particular table that lay completely flat; covered as it was with poker chips and coins splattered with blood.

From the rest of the mess around him, he turned to look up at the rail on the second floor balcony as he considered the woman who'd fallen from it.

"She got up after a bullet nailed her square and fell from way up there?" he asked with some surprise. "You're absolutely sure that she was hit before she fell?"

Tombs nodded as he too considered the balcony rail.

"According to those who witnessed it, the shot put her back hard against the wall where she stumbled forward and just up and fell over the rail, not unlike a sack of potatoes as one of the witnesses put it rather bluntly, I might add."

With his hands rested upon his gun belt, Poe slowly turned to take in more of the damage around them.

He found blood splattered and mixed to pool with dirt and other debris along several walls along with one particular area of the floor that was several shades darker than the wood around it.

Unfortunately familiar with the result of someone having bled out from a slit throat, combined with the oval shape of the darkened wood, he knew it could only have come from one source.

"I take it that's where she pulled her razor?"

Tombs nodded, as he moved to stand just outside the darkened area. "Slit his throat, held his head to one side by the hair and kissed him on the neck as his blood gushed out against her, or so I've been told."

"You've got ... to be joking." Poe offered incredulously.

"Nope, and that's not all of it; saved the best part for last." The big man replied as he moved to take the side stair up to the second floor without further explanation.

Once Poe managed to catch up, he realized what his friend had meant.

The body of a dead man lay face up and naked on the bed in front of them, brown eyes open and blank; from what could seen at first blush, the dark tan of his muscled body offered some evidence that he must have worked long hours under the sun.

Little or no facial hair or stubble of beard growth suggested a recent shave, while long tangled brown hair flowed over the pillow around his head.

Several articles of clothing, a pair of boots and a gun belt lay piled haphazardly over a nearby chair.

Tombs moved to one side and gestured for Poe to take a closer look while he watched and waited.

For his cursory exam, without having touched the body Poe looked for wounds in the usual places as he worked his way up from below the dead man's waist, across his lower abdomen, over his chest and up to his throat.

From what he'd seen or otherwise heard of in passing about situations not entirely unlike this one, more often than not when a whore chose to kill or otherwise maim her client for one reason or another, she'd usually done so once her victim had been properly distracted through unfettered access to softer far more vulnerable areas of his anatomy that they'd exposed for far different reasons than what she'd done with them.

A quick flick or two of the razor would normally have been enough to incapacitate most any man who might have otherwise tried to chase them down afterward.

However, other than several assorted scars from long healed wounds, not a mark on the otherwise healthy looking body seemed unusual until he got to the neck area.

Poe leaned in to get a closer look at wounds of some sort along the right side of the man's throat where small rivulets of blood had trailed down to the pillow beneath his head.

Ever so gently, he reached out to turn the dead man's head to the side so that he could get a closer look at his wounds. From initial observation, he was startled to realize that from what he could see of them, they clearly looked to be some sort of bite mark; with distinct pairings of puncture wounds top and bottom not unlike that of a snake bite.

From the loose feel of the dead man's head as Poe gently turned it back and forth several times, his neck appeared to have somehow been broken as well.

"Franklin, as funny as this may have been on your part to set up, you and I both know that vampires simply do not exist. Care to explain what the hell really happened here before this prank gets out of hand?"

His smile died on his lips when he found that his friend had remained solemn and was not smiling back.

Tombs simply reached to pull the toothpick that he'd been chewing on and tossed it out the door.

"Had no idea that you'd be showing up like you did today Poe. Found him like this not long after the fight. As best we can figure, Medusa tried to dismount when she heard the first few shots and when the dead man objected ... voila; snap, crackle and pop."

Poe seriously began to consider the same far-fetched conclusion that his friend had, given the evidence that he'd found in front of them.

A vampire had done this.

He'd heard and seen many strange things in his day, but nothing that had ever looked clearly as strange as what he was looking at now.

"Okay ..." Poe began with a long sigh, "... for the sake of argument; if this whore and her friends were really vampires, and I'm not about to say that quite yet, what exactly do we do about it now, given that they're probably long gone by now?"

Poe patiently waited for his friend to admit that this had all been some kind of sick practical joke.

From the big man's lack of reaction, such an admission was as unlikely to be forthcoming as he may have otherwise hoped or wished for.

"Had someone track them as far as Mason Ridge ..." Tombs offered as he nodded toward the window, "... where there's an old hunting lodge that's been used off and on for several years. To be perfectly honest, I was planning to have someone from town lead a posse up there to check it out; but now that you happened up on us as you have, perhaps it may be far more prudent for someone of a more federal level to do it rather someone local."

Poe couldn't help but laugh at the suggestion.

"You were seriously going to send a posse after them and not lead it yourself? I remember the day when you would have gone after them alone and not even bothered to call for help even from me."

Tombs didn't laugh, but smiled in a knowing way.

Apparently,he hadn't bothered to share everything that there was to share as of yet.