Blood Mother. A Vampire Tale

Ch.1: Hoyt

Hoyt could smell the scene before he got to it. He crossed under the yellow tape flapping in the wind and walked to the tarp. He didn't need it lifted. He knew what was under there long before he even left his apartment and got into the car. The only unknowns were the sex, the age, and the reason.

There were no jokes this time around. No swirling comments about the sexy new medical examiner, no chit chat. Five murdered kids in a month cures even seasoned cops of their ability to joke and rib each other to cope.

As per protocol Hoyt lifted the tarp and eyed the scene below it. The boy was about four years old. His golden curls were tinged with amber brown from coagulated blood. His face was white, and lips dark blue, almost black. He was arranged as the others, lying on his back with his open eyes staring into the sky above. His shoes, small white sneakers, were pointed the same way, as if he were cloud watching.

Hoyt leaned down, trying to breathe as shallow as possible to not inhale the smell of death. The size of the body and the weather didn't matter. Death wasn't picky about size or season, it arrived at anytime, and always announced itself by scent before sight.

The boy's hands were clean, and nails perfectly manicured. There was no sign of any struggle. Hoyt knew that when he was naked on the metal table at the medical examiners office, not a bruise would be found, except for those gotten long before he was brought to the park under the cover of the moon.

Hoyt also knew there would be no witnesses, and the parents would swear under oath that not a single thing was out of place in the room, and not a single sound was heard. It was all a repeat of the last four bodies. Right down to the stargazing.

Hoyt used his pen to lift the curls. Just as he knew it would be, the boys neck had a large rip allowing tendons and muscles to protrude. The other side of the neck had skin as perfect as the day he was born which was not long ago.

"Fuck!" Hoyt yelled at no one in particular. He felt it already, the buzzing starting across his forehead. He was aware that soon it would turn into a full blown headache that would threaten to spoil the concentration he needed to get through this day.

He scanned the officers on the scene until he found Tessa. A petite, doe eyed rookie that would be his saving grace when talking to the family. Tess would be soft and sensitive and a hand for the parents to hold and squeeze as they realized their missing child was not wandering the park looking for home. She was the shoulder they would lean on as they screamed for all the dreams that died when their child did.

It was only fair to them he reasoned, that their memory of this horrendous moment be a soft one and that his lopsided mug not be the one they envisioned in all the nightmares that followed.

He covered the boy once more with the tarp and walked across the barren park lot to stand in front of Tessa. "You got the short straw today Montross, you're coming with me for the ID."

Her doe eyes grew and pupils dilated, and in the fraction of a second her lips turned down. "Yes sir." Hoyt couldn't help but be glad. An argument was the last thing he needed with a headache, another dead kid, and a vamp on the loose.

Hoyt knew the case would be listed as homicide. That the new medical examiner would teeter between wild animal attack and human gone bad. He had run this race more than once, and would play by the rules of those that refused to believe in boogie men.

But on his off hours, Hoyt would do what he did best, network the underground, invade the nests, and look for the rogue that decided children were the new special of the day. And when he found them, Hoyt would not hesitate to put a stake through that vamps heart and send them back to hell where they belonged. He would gladly go himself, as long as the vamp went down with him.

He placed his sunglasses back on his face to shield his eyes from the blinding light of the sun. He surveyed the scene from afar waiting beside his car. Photos snapped, notes taken, minds working at specific jobs trying to figure out a senseless crime.

As he waited for Tessa Montross to finish up clearing her daily schedule he couldn't help a small voice wishing he could tell her to run. None of this would make sense to any of these people in the long run. No child killer on the loose would ever grace the front page of the paper.

If Hoyt was lucky, it would all end with a great public relations story and a puff of smoke.  The truth buried in paperwork kept in a box deep in a warehouse that would never be opened. The boogeyman was on the loose and could only he caught by someone who believed he existed. And even then it would take a hell of a lot more than luck.