Splattered

Fifteen: Bolt Investigates

Though the weather was cold—cold enough to freeze nose hairs—Bolt demanded that Lloyd accompany him to Pleasant Street School. He gave two reasons for this. The first: He needed a lookout to watch the halls for what he called peepers and creepers. “Dickheads, basically,” Bolt went on to explain, “who can’t keep their goddamned business where it belongs.” The second reason was really more of a response to the old man’s whining about the weather: “For Christ’s sake, Lloyd, the school’s only a block down the street! Where’s your pecker?” Standing inside the front door of the Wooster-Boalt home, Lloyd had glanced down as if to assure himself that his pecker was still where it belonged, then reached for his scarf. “Atta boy,” Bolt said. “I love you, Lloyd. You’re the best.”

Shoes crunching in road salt, they walked across West Main Street to South Pleasant. It was just after 7PM, but the sidewalks were already empty. No one in Norwalk wanted anything to do with this frigid February. But for the vampire and his servant, the world all around was deathly quiet.

“Lovely evening,” Bolt said, strolling along like a master of all he surveyed (and wasn’t he exactly that?).

“I beg to differ, My Lord,” came the butler’s shaky reply.

“We’re almost at the school.”

They crossed the parking lot—icy, treacherous—to reach the entrance to the gymnasium. Here Bolt was forced to make Lloyd wait a few minutes while he flew to the roof and entered the school through a small trap-door that let on the attic. From here it was a simple matter of going to the office to disable the alarm, then back to the gym to let Lloyd inside.

“Could you have taken any longer with all of that s**t, My Lord?” the butler asked, shivering in the gym’s foyer.

Bolt flushed. “My bad, Lloyd. I haven’t been here in awhile. Vera usually reports direct.”

“I know that, My Lord. I let her in each time she visits.”

Now he scowled at the old man. “So what are you bitching about? Let’s go.”

That Vera had failed to report had been no great hardship to Bolt at first. The newspaper article about the cigarette-smoking juvenile’s disappearance pleased him well enough to assume things were fine. At first. But now it was Tuesday night, and Vera’s whereabouts—along with her report—were still unknown. The time had come for proactive measure.

Lloyd clicked on his flashlight. The beam danced across masonry walls decorated with crayon drawings, lunch menus, and the occasional trophy. None of it interested Bolt in the slightest. His cloak fanned open like a wing as he swept across the gym with eyes fixed on the stage—or rather, the basement door in back of the stage. A single, elegant leap had him up to where the students sometimes did holiday plays. His boots clicked on polished wood, sending echoes over the gym. He heard Lloyd call for him to wait, and turned to see the old man gingerly climbing a set of stairs on the right.

“What if she’s not here, My Lord?” he asked. “It is feeding time, after all. I surmise she’s out with the rest of the undead, having a jolly good time scaring up dinner. Or perhaps simply tearing the heads off innocent young virgins.”

“Perhaps,” Bolt said, after a long look in the other’s direction. “But as you well know, Lloyd, I don’t need your flashlight to see.” He gestured towards the back of the stage. “Shine it there. You’ll notice the basement door is ajar.”

Lloyd’s beam went to the door, which was indeed open about six inches off the frame, baring cold blackness. “Oh no, My Lord.”

“Oh yes. Something’s afoot.”

“My Lord?”

“Afoot, Lloyd. Strange. Wrong. Off-center. We need to find out what.”

“Very good, My Lord.”

Bolt grimaced. “Very good? I bet you’re the kind of guy who clicks like on f******k when he sees a picture of a car crash, am I right?”

“No, My Lord. I’m a cat person.”

“How original. Let’s go.”

They were not halfway down the steps before Bolt knew what happened. He froze and asked Lloyd if he smelled anything funny. But of course the old man didn’t. He couldn’t see in the dark, or jump on top of buildings…or smell burned vampire flesh from across a musty basement. Following his nose now, Bolt went to the bottom of the stairs, then found his way to the back wall, where rested an open, charred coffin. Inside were the remains of Vera. They didn’t amount to much. There was a grinning skull, a rib-cage. A femur, a pelvis. Pitiful. Vera had been a strong vampire. Better than the average bear, especially considering her youth. She could have been great; she could have been a master. What a terrible waste.

“Too young,” Bolt uttered, frowning down at the cadaver. “Too young.”

Seconds later Lloyd joined him. A gasp escaped his throat. “My Lord! Is this…is this Miss Calinga?”

Bolt watched his light dance on the bones. “Yes,” he answered.

He could think of nothing else. Except for perhaps one thing: Keltie Burke had killed three of his vampires in less than a year. Two of them had been mighty—over a hundred years old.

“What does that mean?” he asked the skull.

Was she good? Did the girl possess a natural skill for survival Bolt had hitherto never known? Or was she just damned lucky?

Vera’s skull had nothing to say on the matter. It went on with its grin and its vacuous stare. Bolt waited anyway, willing it to answer.

“You’ve got quite a heady b***h on your hands.”

“Indeed,” Bolt said. “Indeed I do, Lloyd.”

The servant’s flashlight beam had found its way to the floor, illuminating the stake and hammer Keltie had presumably used to create this mess. After a moment’s pause Bolt knelt, picked them up. His eyes studied them. Each looked crude and heartless. They were covered in tacky blood, which should have meant fingerprints, but apparently Keltie had been wearing gloves of some kind. Bah! She was still a stupid girl. Careless. Even now Bolt could smell her cigarettes—a faint odor, but one unmistakable as the peppermint she sometimes used to cover it up. Stupid, careless, and untidy. All of these described Keltie Burke. Oh, and of course…

Bolt smiled. “Heady b***h. Good one, Lloyd.”

“Yes, My Lord.”

“Let’s check Vera’s old house. Maybe her family knows how Keltie found this place. If they do, we kill them. And then”—he raised the stake and hammer—“we kill Keltie. With these.”

“Very good, My Lord.”

“But not fast.” In the shadows, Bolt’s smile became a grin, causing his servant to take a hesitant step back. “Slowly, Lloyd. Oh, so slowly.”

Weapons in hand, he turned to leave, but not before a large, brown spider scuttled from under Vera’s coffin. Bolt heard it, saw it…and then stepped down, crushing it to death.