A woman stared into the alley while a tall, dark figure ran away, after realizing he’d got caught. She was paralyzed for a few seconds, trying to understand what she was seeing. Getting her voice back, she let out a loud, high pitched scream that caught the attention of everyone on the street.
It was late enough at night that there weren’t too many people outside. A couple of officers came running towards where the woman was standing, a horrified look on her face.

“Miss, is everything alright?” asked one of the policemen.

The woman seemed to get more nervous by the second. Her entire body trembled, and all she could do was slowly point a finger at the empty space before them. The men followed the direction she aimed at, only to realize that the alley wasn’t empty after all.

Right before them, on the ground, lay a man above a pool of blood that got bigger in the blink of an eye. His chest was still.

The police officers crossed eyes, an alarmed looked on both of their faces. One of them knelt on the ground and put two fingers on the man’s neck, checking for a pulse. Nothing. The man was clearly dead.

Removing his fingers from the body, the patrolman noticed that he had blood on his fingers, as if it was coming from somewhere on the collar area. Taking a closer look, he noticed two small marks on the right side of the neck.

“Get to Scotland Yard. Tell them we have another one.”

In an office inside the Scotland Yard building, a man sat on a chair in front of his desk. He looked very busy, writing fast on a paper while looking at others. Suddenly, the door to his room was quickly opened, interrupting his focus.

“Sir?” said the man at the door, afraid of how the inspector was gonna react after being disturbed.

“What is it, officer Greg?” the inspector answered, sounding irritated.

“We found another body a few blocks from here, lower St. Martin’s Lane.”

“Are you sure it was one of them?” asked the man sitting down, still looking at the papers in front of him.

“Officer Thomas checked the neck and found the bite marks. It’s definitely the work of a vampire.”

This time, the inspector raised his head to look at the expression on the policeman’s face. He seemed anxious, as if the news weren’t over yet.

“I will contact the detective right away. Is there anything else?”

“As the matter of fact sir, there is. The woman who found the body.”

“What about her?” the man had already turned his head to the papers again, not paying much attention to what he was saying.

“She says she saw the killer.”

Hearing this, the inspector dropped everything he had in his hands on the table, got up with a jump and took his coat from the back of his chair. Picking up the briefcase he always carried with him from under his desk, he looked back at the officer.

“I will take a cab and find Alastair at his apartment. You go back to Thomas and the woman and wait for us there. We’ll be there as fast as the hansom can go.”

In a small apartment in Whitehall, near Charing Cross, the center of London, detective Alastair Blackwood stood alone in his living room, looking at the dark sky from his window. He sat in a velvet covered green arm chair, with a dark colored mahogany desk in front of him, covered with books, papers, telegrams and such.

The vampire hadn’t killed anyone for about four days, and he wondered if he had maybe left the city, although he doubted that very much. Being currently stuck in the case, the detective waited for something to happen while enjoying the quietness of his place. He liked being alone.

After Scotland Yard had found five bodies in two weeks, he thought it wouldn’t be too hard to find the monster. However, this man proved to be very evasive and careful with his activities. In the past weeks the detective had taken many measures trying to find the vampire, all proven to be in vain. This was no ordinary case.

For his pleasure, he heard footsteps coming from downstairs, and hoped for it to be inspector Harrison. After a few seconds, he heard a knock on the door.

“Who is it?”

“It’s Patrick, Alastair. Open up, it’s important.” the inspector sounded serious.

“Come on in, it’s open. I’ve been waiting for you to come give me news for a couple of days.”

“You’ve been sleeping with your door open?” asked Harrison, already knowing the answer. He opened the door and went inside the apartment.

“Who else is gonna come visit me, Patrick? And even if they do come, I think I can very well defend myself.” said Alastair with an ironical smile, sounding very confident. He went on with his speech. “Sit down, tell me what you have for me.”

“I’d rather be standing. The officers found another body in an alley in St Martin’s. It seems there was a woman who saw the vampire leaving the place.”

Blackwood looked at the inspector seeming very excited. Finally, he left something behind. A witness.

“You see now why I didn’t want to sit down. I’d like to be there as quick as possible. I’ve got a cab waiting for us downstairs. Don’t be long.”

The detective got up from his chair and put on his black long coat, which covered his white shirt and black pants from neck to ankle. He picked up his suitcase and put together some of the papers that were covering his desk, sticking them inside the bag.

“I’m finished, let’s go.”

They went out of the apartment and, after four days, Alastair felt the cold and invigorating breeze of the night on his skin, reminding him of how good it felt to be out at dark, doing what he loved to do: hunting monsters.

After arriving at the crime scene, Alastair went straight to where officer Thomas was standing, near the body of the victim. The pool of blood was already the biggest it would get, covering a big circle around the dead man’s head.
“Good evening Thomas. I assume you already took a closer look at the body. Anything I should know before my own inspection?” he sounded uninterested, clearly wanting to talk to the witness as soon as possible.

“I didn’t find anything special, detective Blackwood, only the same we’ve found on the other bodies: two round marks on the right side of the neck, corresponding to the bite. As you can see, the pool of blood is slightly bigger than normal. We think the killer had to leave the body behind earlier than usual, since the woman saw him.”

“I see. Well, I’m going to talk to the woman first then. I assume she’s the one standing near Gregory?”

“Yes sir. She’s a very nervous person, the woman. We didn’t really get anything out of her until now.”

“I’ll see that she talks.” he turned his back at officer Thomas and gazed at the woman for a few moments. She was definitely dazed, like she couldn’t believe what she saw. Alastair didn’t really understand that in other people, having seen monsters his entire life. After about ten seconds, the girl noticed that he was staring at her and looked back into his eyes, as if wanting to speak. He approached her.

“Hello miss. I’m detective Alastair Blackwood. I’m a sort of a consultant to the Scotland Yard when they need to handle… special cases. Which I believe is what we have here today.” the woman kept staring into his eyes, now absorbing the information he gave to her. It looked like she wanted to speak, but couldn’t find the words or voice inside herself to do it. Sensing this, Alastair decided to comfort her. Maybe this will calm her down.

“Miss, I know what happened here is very scary. But you are the only person who can give us any sort of lead on this case. And I’m sure that whatever you know would help us very much. And the man lying on the ground over there.” after saying this, he felt very stupid. Well that wasn’t comforting at all, was it? Still, it seemed like what he said must have hit her hard, because she started talking right away.

“He saw me. The man in the black coat. If you can call that thing a man.”

“If you could describe the scene to me, that would be much appreciated.” he took off a pencil and piece of paper from his briefcase so he could take some notes of what the woman would say. The woman took a deep breath before moving on with her speech.

“I was walking down the street, towards my sister’s apartment a couple blocks from here. I didn’t have money for a cab or no one to accompany me this late at night, so I walked very fast and looked everywhere around me, scared to be outside after dark. When I reached this alley and looked at it, checking for any sort of criminal that could come for me, I saw him. He must have heard my steps, and turned around quickly to look me in the face. I let my purse fall on the ground and he ran away through the back alley of the building on the right. Then I screamed, and the police officers came to help me.”

Alastair took notes of the described event very quickly, not wanting to miss an important detail.

“What about his face? Did you get a good look at it? Was there anything that caught your attention?”

“It was very pale, and he had deep, blood red eyes. They were very… hypnotizing. I couldn’t really notice anything anymore after looking into those eyes.” she now stared at the ground, as if reliving the scene in her mind.

Alastair took some more notes about the description. It wasn’t enough to make a drawing, but he didn’t care. That wasn’t why he was happy that the vampire had left a witness behind.

“Thank you very much for your help, miss. I will have someone accompany you to your sister’s house now, if you still wish to go there. Maybe officer Greg could do us that favor?”

“Certainly, sir.” he directed her towards the sidewalk and they went walking, both disappearing behind a building.
Alastair put his notes and the pencil back inside the bag, and moved towards the body.

“It’s getting late, Thomas. If you’d like to go home, we can take it from here.” the young man said goodnight to the detectives, and left the alley.

Alastair now knelt before the body, taking a closer look at the picture. The man was fairly young, maybe at his thirties. He had brown hair and very common face, nothing that called his attention. He searched the man’s pockets for a wallet and found one.

“Here, I found a wallet. This is your side of the case, you know I don’t care much about the victims.” he couldn’t be bothered with it. His job was to handle the supernatural, not let the family know of the tragedy that had happened.
Something caught his attention. The pool of blood, which was indeed bigger than the other ones, had a weird shape in one of its sides, a little towards the center of the pool. He reached in, getting an even closer look on that dark night. What he realized made him let out a cry of content.

“Aha! Come Patrick, and get a closer look at what our killer left us.” the man approached the body, now also kneeling beside it. “You see it? There, on that side. The monster had such a big shock that, when he got up to run, he stepped on the pool of blood! I bet he didn’t notice it. Let’s look for footprints, shall we?”

Both the men followed the direction that the woman had said the killer had ran to, towards the back of the alley and behind the building on the right. Walking slowly and carefully, not to step on any evidence, Alastair was able to find the small trail of blood that the vampire had left on the floor. It ended on a door behind the building that stood half-open, letting the light of the apartment illuminate the outside world.

“It looks like our killer may not have gone too far after all.”

“You think he could be staying in one of the apartments in this building?” asked inspector Harrison.

“I don’t know. But we should at least talk to some of the people who live here. They might have heard or seen something.” both detectives now entered the building, Alastair feeling very optimistic about that night.

The men found themselves in a short hallway, which contained a few doors leading to apartments, a small space where the front door was and stairs on its left end. Alastair and Patrick could now clearly see the blood spots on the ground, the yellow light of the corridor much more helpful than the dark night outside. They followed the stains that took them to next floor of the building.

“Let’s keep going. If he’s at the building, he’ll know we’ll find him soon enough. We have to be quick. If we don’t find him anywhere, we’ll come back and interrogate everyone.”

They climbed up to the second floor. The upstairs hallway looked the same as the downstairs one, except for one more apartment door located where the entrance door should be. Alastair spoke quietly, but excited.

“Look! The blood stops there!” he pointed to the last door to the right of the corridor, where the footprint had clearly turned right, possibly to enter the apartment.

“It could be just a distraction.” said Harrison.

“We’ll never know unless we get in there.” the detectives walked slowly towards the end of the hallway. When they reached the last door, Alastair pressed his right ear against it, trying to hear something. “I think I hear footsteps, going from one side to the other of the apartment. Is he waiting for something?”

Alastair made a quick and risky decision. He slowly put his hand on the doorknob, and quietly turned it to see if the door was open. It was. While he opened the door, he could hear loud noises coming from inside. Whoever was in there knew that someone was trying to get inside.

He bust open the door quickly, but it was too late. There was no one there anymore. On the other side of the room there was window, large enough for a man to go through it. It was open, the curtains that covered it swinging with wind coming from outside.

Alastair rushed towards it, and looked everywhere on the street, desperately trying to find someone or something that would get his attention. Unfortunately, there was nothing.

“Hey, Alastair. You got to take a look at this.”

Disappointed, he closed the window so the wind would rush into the room no more, and turned his back to it. That’s when he noticed what Harrison was talking about.

The entire opposite wall was filled with all sorts of newspaper cuts, drawings, notes, letters and all sorts of communication forms he could think of. He walked towards the wall to take a closer look to all the papers, and saw something very alarming. That entire mural had information on him, Alastair Blackwood.

Newspaper mentions from Scotland Yard on cases he helped solve, from the most recent ones to the ones Alastair could barely remember now. Thoroughly detailed drawings of himself, with explanations on the way he dressed, his daily habits and everything else he could think about his own life. Letters and telegrams that the vampire had received back from someone, in response to the ones he definitely sent with information on Alastair, and even some that he himself had sent to others. This was his entire life put up in a wall!

“What the…” he couldn’t believe or understand what he was seeing. The vampire was… spying on me?

Alastair looked around the wall very quickly, and saw one notice that scared him from head to toe. It was a cut from a Newcastle newspaper. It looked a lot older than most other papers on the mural, and was centered in the wall, with various other pieces of information around it. Notes on Alastair’s childhood. His parents. The murder.

“There’s something else over here.” Alastair turned around and saw Patrick standing near a wooden desk. He noticed that the trail of blood that took them to that apartment went straight towards where Harrison was standing first, before the vampire started walking inside the rest of the room. He walked to the table and took a look at what Patrick had found.

Together with other pieces of paper all around, there was a smaller note that was stained with blood. It looked fairly fresh, which made him think that the man had wrote that right before jumping out the window. He left me a message.

He picked up the note and read it. There was an address and a date on it. The place was a couple of blocks from where they were now. The date, tomorrow night. The last line said only: Come alone. He wants me to... go meet him?

“You’re not thinking about going there all by yourself, are you?” Patrick sounded genuinely worried.

“It’s our only chance. You know there’s nothing you or any other officer can do against vampires or any other monsters. It’ll be too dangerous for you. I don’t want anyone’s blood in my hands anymore.

Alastair looked at the note, thinking of what his next step was going to be.

“This mural. It has nothing to do with the case. Would you mind if I took it all with me?” he didn’t want anyone seeing that. It was all very personal to him, and he didn’t like to share his past.

“Go ahead. I won’t tell anyone. For our friendship.” Patrick sounded very sincere and a little emotional toward Alastair. “Well, it seems like our night adventure is over. If you don’t need any help here, I’ll be on my way home.”

Alastair knew that he was doing that on purpose, so that he could be alone with his thoughts and his personal matters.

“Yes, I got this. Go home to your family.” he started picking up some papers from the desk and the wall and putting them on his briefcase, taking a small look at each one of them before, while Harrison left the room.

After he was done, he took one last look outside, through the window. The streets were completely empty now at this hour. He wondered what the next day would bring him.

The following day went by slowly. Alastair spent the morning sleeping late, and woke up during lunch hour. He was avoiding the briefcase, full with his past.

When he moved to London, five years before the current, he had been a very busy man. The city was filled with monster attacks, and the police didn’t really have any means to deal with them. Vampire and werewolf killings were part of the daily routine. No one would go outside after dark, scared to be attacked by any sort of monstrosity.
Reading the news at the local paper in Newcastle, where he lived with his mother, he knew that was his chance to help people. He explained to her what he had to do, packed his things and moved to the great city, where he would spend the next three years defending the citizens, solving mysteries and hunting monsters.

Vampires were his favorite prey. He had personal reasons for that. His father, who had been a great hunter before him, had been killed by one of the bloody creatures. Alastair now wanted revenge, and he wouldn’t stop until he succeeded.

Arriving at London, he immediately started going after the authorities, asking about any crimes that had happened in the past months. He eventually found various different vampires, hunted them down and interrogated them before cutting their heads off. Unfortunately, none of those monsters seemed to have any idea of who he or his father were. They were simple murderers without a plan, living off of the blood of the rich and the poor.

After three years of constant work, the monster sightings had started to slow down. Alastair had a few jobs here and then, dealing with wretched creatures, but none of them were vampires. Now, two years had passed since the last time he hunted one of them. And Alastair wanted to know why they were back.

He had a clue now. None of the previous vampires had ever shown any interest or knowledge in who he was. This man, on the other hand, had clearly come to London for the sole purpose of retrieving information on him. The killings were simply the vampire’s daily meal, and not at all related to the matter. It was clear to Alastair that something had drastically changed.

He spent the entire afternoon reading all the information the vampire had on him. Nothing surprised him. Everything was mostly public information on Alastair. Cases he helped the police solve, lists of people he had helped and monsters he had killed in the past years. Even the notes on his daily routine didn’t really get his attention. The letters that the vampire received were nothing but a short answer, with no names or anything in them that could tell Alastair who had sent them or where they came from.

It was now night, one hour before the meeting with the man. Alastair calculated that he could be there in twenty minutes, so he started putting his things together. His pistol, the special bullets filled with holy water, an axe. Everything he needed to kill a vampire.

He knew it wasn’t gonna be that easy. Plus, he couldn’t simply kill the creature. He needed information from it. He walked inside the apartment, impatiently, while looking outside his window. It seemed like it was gonna rain that night. Very appropriate.

Alastair paid the cab driver and stepped out of the vehicle. The place that was in front of him was an old abandoned warehouse. The perfect place for a meeting with the devil.

He walked towards the front door of the place, put his hand on the doorknob and turned it. It was locked.

He then decided to take a walk around the building, looking for an alternative entrance to the place. Alastair eventually found one, on the back alley. This one was already half-open, making him feel invited inside.

He stepped through the passage. It was dark in there, but not enough that he couldn’t see. He carried his pistol in one hand, the axe safe on his waist belt.

He slowly and quietly walked through the corridor he was at, attentively looking for something, his pistol held firm in his hand. Then, he heard a noise. Something was above him, probably on the second floor.

The place was like a labyrinth, full of rooms and hallways. It was very difficult to find somewhere that would give him an advantage.

“Lost, are we?” someone spoke, somewhere above him. He had a deep, raspy voice, with a strong English accent. It can only be him.

“I didn’t think you’d really come alone, Mr. Blackwood.”

“I didn’t think you’d come at all” Alastair kept walking, alert to any noise or movement that would show him where the man was. He still felt a presence above him, but couldn’t find any stairs in that damned place.

Alastair turned to his right, now looking at a small, empty room. No sign of anything that could take him upstairs. Suddenly, he felt the place get colder. He turned around, but it was too late. The vampire was already there, and with a quick movement he hit Alastair’s arm very hard. His pistol when flying to a corner of the room.

The monster now held Alastair by the neck, its exceptional strength lifting him from the ground. While he desperately tried to rid himself of the vampire’s grip, the other man laughed.

“Don’t try to fight it, Alastair. It’ll be done before you know it.”

Putting all his concentration together, the detective was able to put his right hand in his pocket and take a small object out of it. It was a tiny vial of of holy water that he always carried around with him in case of emergencies. That was a big one. He quickly took off the vial’s lid with his fingers and waved the object, hitting the vampire’s eyes with it.

The creature let Alastair fall to the ground. It took some steps back, screaming loudly, clearly in a lot of pain. Taking advantage of his vulnerability, the detective quickly dragged himself towards his pistol. He picked it up, got up from the floor and, just as the vampire was recovering himself, he took a shot at it, hitting him in the chest. It fell on the ground, still alive. Just as Alastair needed him. He approached the creature, still pointing the gun at it.

“Why are the vampires back in London” he asked angrily.

“Hah. Are you sure that’s the question you want to ask me? You know I won’t be alive for long.”

Alastair knew that was true, and as he grew tired of the man’s jokes, he went straight to the more important matter.
“Why were you following me? Why did want to kill me?” the vampire laughed one more time, coughing blood while at it.

“Kill you? You still haven’t figured it out have you? My orders were never to kill you, Alastair. Only to… take you with me.”

“Take me? Where? To whom?” the creature smiled.

“Your father says hi.”

With this, Alastair realized that the man wouldn’t answer any questions. He picked up the axe from his waist belt and got ready for the blow. It was very sharp, and Alastair could feel the bone being broken and the arteries being cut at one. With one clean hit, the monster was dead, its head now rolling on the ground away from its body.
Alastair searched the vampire’s body for any sort of clues. All he found was an enigmatic letter.  

 I have all the information I need on the detective. Execute the plan as soon as possible. It’ll all be over soon.

The back of the paper had two letters written on it. B. G. Initials, maybe?

Alastair couldn’t find anything else, so he picked up his things and left the warehouse. He would let the authorities know about the killing in the morning. He went home, thinking about the letter he found.

A few hours later, somewhere outside of London, a man rushed into a room.

“Master, we have news.” the man sounded anxious.

“What is it now?”

“It’s Byron. He’s dead. Blackwood killed him.”

“Which means that soon enough he will come for us.” the vampire smiled. “Good. Let him come.”