Stake-Out (Paranormal Detectives Series Book 1) Read online

  StakeOut

  Paranormal Detectives Book 1

  By Lily Luchesi

  Published by Vamptasy Publishing

  An Imprint of

  Crushing Hearts and Black Butterfly Publishing LLC

  Novi, Michigan 48374

  The right of Lily Luchesi to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him/her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it was published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  Cover Design by Rue Volley

  Edited by Elizabeth A. Lance

  Copyright© 2015

  All rights reserved

  Vamptasy Publishing

  www.vamptasy.com

  Prologue

  June 2012

  “Cause if my eyes don’t deceive me/There’s something going wrong around here.” —Joe Jackson

  Detective First Grade Daniel Mancini was on assignment to follow a homicide suspect. The man was suave, British and rich. He was also suspected of murdering two women in the past two weeks. It was Danny’s mission to put the perp behind bars…at least, until he could get a needle in his arm! He should have had his partner with him, but she was on maternity leave and the Chicago Police Department was short-handed, so he was on his own that night.

  He followed the man from his house in a rural and posh suburb to the South Side of the city, in one of the worst neighborhoods.

  It was foggy and cold; felt more like mid-March than June. He watched his perp chat up a young woman on the corner. Prostitute. The other two had also been classified as “ladies of the night”, but the second one turned out to be the runaway wife of a high-powered lawyer. She’d left because he beat her and withheld any money he earned from her. He would’ve killed her eventually; this way she’d just ended up deader sooner. It was her death that put this investigation at the top of Homicide’s priority list.

  He brought along his smartphone to photograph or film the perp talking with the woman, for proof. He hung back as long as possible, hating the thought that he might cause a woman emotional trauma by waiting, but, in order to make the charges stick, he needed to catch the perp in the act. He clipped the phone to his belt, hoping the video camera would catch everything. He needed his hands free.

  Keeping one hand on his gun, he crept closer, keeping his distance, until he heard a woman’s gurgling scream. He dashed into the alleyway and what he saw changed his life forever.

  The woman was on the cold, wet, dirty concrete, trying to scream again. She couldn’t, because the perp was latched onto her throat with fangs that could only be described as Dracula-worthy. Her clothes were torn and blood flowed from one breast and her abdomen. He could clearly distinguish the bite marks as those he saw in every old vampire movie ever made (with the exception of Nosferatu).

  “Freeze! Police!” he cried, taking out his gun. He fired two shots, which, on a normal man, would’ve proved instantly fatal. On this perp, it was like firing a BB gun at a rhino.

  The perp looked up, his pale face ghoulish in the waning light from the lamppost a few feet down. The whites of his eyes were blood red and his pupils were entirely black, like a cat’s…or a bat’s. His face had elongated somehow, to accommodate the mouthful of fangs, two of which were protruding more than the others to pierce the skin. His jaw was slick and shiny with the dark, sticky lifeblood of the girl who was now breathing her last breaths. The hiss that issued from that evil mouth was like a hellborn snake. His eyes widened even more, making Danny feel faint. He passed out in the alley. His last sight, the poor dead girl with blood flowing from her unearthly bite marks and then ceasing, as her heart also ceased to beat.

  The last thing he heard was a small shuffling and footsteps coming toward him before all thought ceased.

  ****

  When he came to, he was in the hospital, his captain, Mark Collins, at his bedside.

  “Hey, welcome back to the land of the living, Detective,” he said, snapping his Dan Brown novel closed. “How’s your head?”

  “Hurts like Hell,” Danny replied. “How long was I out?”

  “A few hours. The docs said you were knocked unconscious, probably by the perp. Do you remember what happened?”

  Danny, hearing the word “perp”, shot up in bed. “Captain, did they find my phone on me? It was a Samsung Galaxy S2.”

  Captain Collins went to inquire about Danny’s property and came back shaking his head. “No phone. The perp probably snatched it after he knocked you out. There was also a report of shots fired. Did you fire your gun?”

  “Yes. As soon as I’m medically cleared I’ll give you my full report back at the station.” This was way too weird of a story to give in a hospital!

  The Captain, knowing that Mancini was a revered member of the force, decided to allow that, though they really did need that report ASAP.

  The doctor came in and requested that the captain leave so that Danny could get his rest. He was to be discharged the next day, after overnight observation.

  Danny attempted to sleep, but as soon as he closed his eyes, he saw the…thing, attacking that woman. Either his subconscious remembered things his waking mind refused to acknowledge, or he was embellishing the Hellish details that made every Stephen King novel he’d ever read seem like Mickey Mouse!

  This time, after the scream, he not only saw, but heard the ripping sound of her tender flesh as the…thing’s teeth tore at it to get to the sweet blood beneath. The smell was pungent, as if he were in a room full of fresh, hot pennies. He tried to gag, but nothing came up. The blood flowed from one breast as if a vampiric baby had decided to nurse, and a large bite oozed more slowly on her hip. The neck was gushing, and the…thing (he could not, even in his unconscious state, call it a vampire) was drinking like a dehydrated man at a water fountain.

  He told it to freeze again, and shot. Again, the shots did nothing but make it look at him as if he were an annoying autograph-seeker bothering a celebrity while they were trying to have a nice, quiet dinner.

  This time, he did not pass out at the thing’s unearthly stare, but watched as he tossed the woman’s now dead body away like a little girl with a rag doll, and it stood, smiling at him with that repulsive mouth filled with fangs and blood.

  “Will you be next, Detective? Or would you rather join me?” he asked seductively.

  Even as a straight man, Danny felt the attraction that the novels talked about. This thing smelled like hot copper, dead flesh and graveyard dirt, yet he was attracted to his allure! The thought of doing what the thing had just done, however…that made him shudder.

  The thing bore down on him and flashed his fangs, ready to bite.

  Danny screamed so loud it hurt and flung himself forward, only to realize that he had been dreaming and was still in his hospital bed. He panicked anyway, even when the hospital attendants came to him, and he tried to fight, to leave. The thing was still out there, and it was up to him to catch it.

  The next thing he knew, he felt a stinging pain of a needle in his vein and he passed out until the sun broke over the horizon and he remembered no more nightmares (recollections?).

  ****

  He went to the precinct as soon as he was medically cleared and sat down with the captain in his office to give his formal statement. He never once thought of sweetening the truth to make it seem less bizarre. After all, he had seen
what he had seen, and he rationalized it to himself that, perhaps, the perp was simply psychotic. That had to be the case, and everything else he “remembered” was just a figment of his wild imagination.

  The captain poured him a finger of whiskey and he began his tale.

  “But, Mancini, there was no body. No bloodstains,” the captain contradicted once Danny had finished his recollection.

  That took him by surprise. No blood? Sure, the perp could’ve hidden the body, but he couldn’t have cleaned up all the blood…unless, of course, he drank it all; lapped it up like a hungry kitten. That thought sent Mancini hurling into the garbage can, puking up his breakfast and the whiskey in one shot.

  Captain Collins gently suggested he take a week or two to recuperate. “After that, maybe you’ll be thinking more clearly,” he added, sending Mancini into one of his infamous temper tantrums.

  “I know what the Hell I saw, Captain! This guy’s insane, and we need to stop him!”

  ****

  Danny became a little belligerent, and he made the captain get two lesser detectives to come in, in case the captain needed backup. He sent Mancini home for the day and then contacted the hospital for the medical records. When he spoke to the doctor, he was informed that Mancini had been dreaming violently, screaming about vampires, blood and death.

  “He repeated, ‘I will never join you’ and ‘you’re sick’,” the doctor finished. “We sedated him and he seemed fine this morning, so we discharged him. Perhaps you should have him evaluated by a psychologist. He might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.”

  Collins thought that that was a grand idea, and made the appointment for the following week. He’d seen that Mancini had wanted to decline, but he told Danny that he figured if all he had to do was talk to a head-shrinker and he’d get to go back to work, why not sacrifice an hour of his time? Danny had agreed.

  ****

  The evaluation seemed to go well, but Mancini knew that shrinks had great poker-faces. But it still came as a surprise when he received the official letter in the mail from the CPD:

  Dear Daniel Mancini,

  We regret to inform you that you did not pass your psychological evaluation with Dr. Hornsby on June 11th, 2012. We have decided that the best course of action, given your 20+ years of service to the Chicago Police Department, is to give you your retirement package early.

  Please accept the papers, along with our most sincere thanks.

  It was signed by the Captain’s superior and attached were papers for him to sign. He could live comfortably on his retirement package and the hefty inheritance he had received from his father decades before, sure, but he was outraged by this disrespect.

  He was jobless, purposeless and thought crazy by everyone whom he had ever respected.

  Chapter One

  June 2014

  “I was so sick n’ tired/Of livin’ a lie/I was wishing that I would die.” —Aerosmith

  Daniel Mancini, formerly Detective 1st Grade, sat in his rambling, classic Victorian home in Chicago’s North Side, watching the sunset. Ever since that fateful night two years prior, he always felt a certain chill down his spine at twilight. While he convinced himself that the perp had been nothing but a crazy human, his subconscious knew better. In his dreams, he always saw the perp for what he really was— an undead demon feeding off humans’ lifeblood.

  The dreams were slowly killing him. He just wondered how he would go— mad from sleep deprivation? Liver poisoning from mixing alcohol with his sleeping and depression pills? Or would he simply eat his own gun? And how much longer did he have before any of that were to occur?

  He sat down to dinner of ramen noodles and a half pint of whiskey, when there was a knock on his door. He decided to ignore it. He had no friends, his family was dead and he had now earned the reputation of a recluse and a drunk in his neighborhood. But the knocker didn’t leave. Instead, they became more persistent. He finally sighed and went to answer the door, wishing he was drunk already.

  He opened the door and had to blink a few times. The person standing there looked like someone out of an action movie…or an anime. She was tall, because she was wearing black leather stiletto boots. Her skin was milky white with a subtle glow from cosmetics. Her eyes were large and so dark they appeared almost black. Her black hair was tied back and long, with a few pieces hanging around her face.

  Her clothing was all black and very professional…except for those boots. He noticed a subtle bulge under her coat, which hinted at a firearm.

  “Can I help you?” he asked cautiously. She looked young, maybe only in her early twenties.

  “Daniel Mancini?” she asked in a clipped tone.

  “Yes? And you are?”

  She opened her jacket, giving him a full view of her two guns on her hips and two knives strapped to her thighs, and pulled out a silver badge. It read: “Detective, PID” with a badge number beneath it. On the shield was an engraved cross. It did not state a city. “My name is Angelica Cross. I need to speak with you. May I come in?”

  “Forgive me, Detective Cross, but I’m not in the habit of inviting in strangers with even stranger badges,” Danny stated. “Where are you from?”

  “Let me in, Mr. Mancini, and I will explain everything,” she said, pocketing her badge. When he was still immobile, she sighed. “If it makes you feel any better, this is about the case that ultimately got you removed from your position at the Chicago Police Department.”

  That got his attention, and flared his temper.

  “I don’t care to speak of it. Goodbye, Detective.” He went to close the door, but she placed her black-gloved hand on the edge of the door, stopping it from closing.

  Staring him down, she said, “Let me in. This is important.”

  The urgency in her tone and the brightness of her eyes made him realize that she was very serious. The case had been closed a month after his “retirement”. The perp had simply vanished, and in Chicago, many other murders took precedent over a cold case.

  Sighing, he said, “Come in.” He watched her walk, noticing that she was full-figured in a Marilyn Monroe kind of way. Too bad she was nearly 30 years his junior and looked as icy as Killer Frost. Oh well, he was allowed to at least look, wasn’t he?

  “Please, sit down. I apologize it’s not the cleanest, but I wasn’t expecting company,” he told her.

  “It’s fine.” She perched on the edge of a black La-Z-Boy recliner and took a small tablet from her inside pocket.

  “Can I offer you a drink?”

  She shook her head and he sat across from her with a sigh. He did NOT want to relive this case!

  “Let me get right to the point. On June 9th, 2012, you witnessed a wanted criminal engaged in…unnatural activities with a victim. You were found unconscious, with no sign of the perp or the victim; not even blood. You told the truth, were not believed and were then given ‘early retirement’ by the CPD after failing your psych eval.” She looked up from her tablet. “Am I correct so far?”

  He nodded, feeling lightheaded. Reliving that night was not pleasant.

  “Allow me to ask, do you still believe that what you saw was the truth? He was mutilating the victim with his fangs and drinking her blood before he knocked you out just by looking at you?” Her tone was so formal, so detached, as if she was doing a random survey.

  “Yes. I know what I saw. The man was psychotic; thought he was a vampire,” he replied, knowing, deep down, that he was not telling the truth. He didn’t think that he was a vampire…he really was one!

  “He was not a psychotic human and you know it,” she said sharply. “Quit lying to yourself.”

  Deciding to try and pretend just a little longer that he was sane and what he saw was simply a crazy human, he said, “Ma’am, vampires don’t exist.”

  She gave an unladylike snort. “Sir,” she mocked, “they do, and you know it. And you’ve done nothing about it in two years!”

  “What could I do, dammit?” he snap
ped. “Get myself some stakes and holy water from my church and walk around like fucking Van Helsing?”

  There. There it was, out in the open. He knew he had seen a true monster and yet he’d been either too scared or too proud to do anything about it.

  “You could’ve come to us,” she said.

  “Who’s ‘us’?” he asked, ignoring the horrific grammatical error he had just made.

  “We’re a part of the FBI, the Paranormal Investigative Division. Now, don’t laugh or think I’m a fruitcake. This division has been around just as long than the real FBI. They just acquired us and outfitted us with better weaponry to fight the good fight. We’re quite underground because to reveal to humans that the things they read about in books or see in the movies are real, well…you can imagine the havoc it would cause.” She stood up and sat next to him, showing him the official Website. It was buried in cyberspace and could only be accessed by people who knew just what to search and click on to find it.

  Danny was never quite comfortable with technology. When the department had required he use a smartphone to take notes he thought he would lose his mind before he mastered. This site seemed quite legitimate and he felt that, at the moment, he had no reason not to believe Detective Cross.

  “Hey, why are you called ‘detective’, then, if you’re an FBI agent?” he asked.

  She shrugged. “Ask my boss. I think it’s a psychological thing, you know…it makes me seem more approachable than calling me ‘agent’.”

  “Look, I don’t mean to be rude, but why exactly are you here, in my living room?” he asked.

  Without missing a beat, she replied, “Would you prefer it if I were in your bedroom, Mr. Mancini?”

  He had been taking a sip of his drink and it went down the wrong pipe after she said that. Cross laughed as he spluttered and coughed. How could he answer that?

  She saved him by crossing her legs and waving her hand as if to say ‘never mind’. “I am here, Mr. Mancini, because you have the skills we require to catch and exterminate this vile offender.”

  He gave her a look. “You want me to join you?”