Mathias's vision was hazy and red. His eyes itched. His skin felt stiff and tight. He didn't know how long he was running through the night, but he finally arrived somewhere familiar to his addled mind. He smashed the high school's front doors with a flick of his hand before staggering inside.
"Hey, who's there?!" a janitor turned the corner coming face to face with Mathias's muzzle.
Mathias didn't even give the man a moment to be surprised. He was so hungry his mind could think of nothing but food. Leaping at the man, Mathias swallowed the janitor's head whole and then bit down.
Crunch
Fresh warm blood gushed into his mouth, and Mathias savoured the delicious flavour with ecstasy, running across his tongue through the janitor's shattered cranium, sucking up as much of the life-providing nectar as he could.
Crunch. Munch.
Mathias began eating the corpse head-first. He bit off its head properly and swallowed gleefully. He devoured the tasty human making sure to tear out and eat the heart and liver first. Those were the best parts after the brain. After he swallowed the last of the corpse, he licked the man's clothes and floor clean as best he could in an attempt to sate his hunger.
But he was still starving. He wanted more. Cheese and chips. Meat and gravy. Cream and beer. And beef and pork or fat and blood, Hot, juicy and sticky blood.
Then he smelled them, more humans further in the school. He stalked forward, and while he was no longer in danger of his body eating itself to fuel his healing, he was nowhere near sated.
Slinking through the school, completely invisible, he found a classroom full of students on their computers. He didn't even hesitate.
"DINNER TIME" Mathias screamed as he launched himself at them.
The students turned just in time to scream as Mathias began to tear into there bodies and feast.
🝣🝘🝍🝂🜷🜬🜡🜖🜋🜀
Julius walked up to Armstrong high school, local police had already tapped off the area, and one of the teachers had come in early and discovered the massacre. As he approached the yellow tap, one of the older police officers approached him.
"Excuse me, sir. This site is closed."
Julius pulled out his fake FBI id and flashed it at him.
"Agent Oswald FBI"
"You're the guy I talked to on the phone."
"Yeah, that's me."
"Do you know what happened?" he asked angrily as Julius ducked under the yellow tape.
"No, I just got here. Someone on the phone mentioned something about a school shooting." Julius Lied.
"School shooting?!" the police offer asked, aghast. "This was not a school shooting. These kids were ripped apart. Let me tell you something: I've lived here my entire life and have never seen anything like this. Let me tell you. No human could have done this, trust me."
While he couldn't allow the police to learn about the paranormal's existence, he didn't need a perfect cover story. Often he could just give the people involved a little push, and they would come to their own inaccurate conclusions all on their own.
The officer led Julius inside as they continued to talk. The school's front doors looked like someone had driven a car through them. Glass and the remains of the door littered the inside of the school.
"What do you think happened here?" Julius asked, leading the officer on.
"My thoughts, some wild animal smelled food inside, made their way into the school and attacked the kids."
In the end, it didn't matter what people thought happened here so long as it wasn't the truth.
"How many victims?" Julius asked as he pulled out a notepad.
"Thirteen dead," Jeff replied. "Twelve students and one janitor. The kids were in one of the classrooms for after-school activities. We found the janitor's bloody clothes but no body."
The janitor was probably a ghoul now. Mathias had shown a propensity for ghouls, so he would likely want to build up his forces again.
Stolen from its rightful author, this tale is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
"At first, we thought this was some kind of animal attack, but the kids --" Jeff trailed off.
"I understand that this can be hard to deal with. You can wait outside if you want while I do my investigation." Julius comforted the man.
The police officer nodded in shame as Julius turned to the computer's lap.
A dozen corpses decorated the computer room, their stomachs disempowered, and their heads split open. The air was so thick with the smell of blood that Julius could taste it. Julius wouldn't call it the worst crime scene he had ever seen, but it wasn't pretty bad.
"Covering this up is going to be a mess," Julius muttered. "I wonder where the Janitors body is? It's not like Mathias would have eaten him unless."
Julius mulled over the idea. Mathias could have eaten the Janitor. If he had, then Mathias was in far worse shape than Julius had initially expected. If he was so injured that he needed to eat entire corpses just to recover the biomass he lost during the fight, then he must have been on his last legs last night.
Julius looked at one of Mathia's victims. Despite her skull being smashed open like a walnut, there was almost no blood on her body.
"Mathias, you came here to eat," Julius muttered. "But he didn't bother to hide any of the evidence. Are you a fresh vampire? If not, what happened to make you so brazen?"
Julius took a few more notes before he left the room. But he didn't leave the building. Instead, he went to the school's office and tracked down the yearbooks. Mathias had come to this school because he felt comfortable here, which meant that he had been here before. It took him almost an hour, but he found what he was looking for.
"Nice to meet you, Mr.Mathias Verdenan," Julius said to the five identical images from the graduating classes of 1938, 1958, 1978, 1998, and 2018.
"Dumbass didn't even change his name," Julius muttered as he pulled out his phone and dialled his handler's number.
"Hello, Julius. Are you calling to tell me you love me?" Remi's familiar voice answered him. Her voice was shockingly soft and entirely befitting a feminine appearance. Instantly all of the security cameras around Julius turned to face him. The nearby computer screens lit up as little hearts, and random images began to dance across the screen. Remi was a literal technowizard with the ability to inhabit and control technology, all from the comfort of her home. Unfortunately, the nearby screen often reflected her own thought process when she was talking to Julius.
"Hello, Remi. It's great to hear your lovely voice. But no, I need the history of Armstrong high school going back to 1933. I'm looking for murders, disappearances, anything odd in the area and everything you can get on Mathias Verdean."
For a long minute, there was no audible response. However, the nearby screens became a cacophony of information as Remi scoured the internet for what Julius needed before eventually finding answers.
"Mathias Verdenan." she began, her voice becoming more mechanical. "The subject was born in March of 1920, most likely became a vampire in 1936. Corssregencesing Subjects' academic records with police reports. Please wait."
Julius waited for less than ten seconds before Remi spoke again.
"Thirty-eight members of the faculty have disappeared under mysterious circumstances. Seventeen were ruled as homicides after the victim's corpses turned up. Most likely the work of the subject."
"Why wasn't the BPA alerted? we have software that checks for patterns like these, don't we?" Julius asked.
"These attacks did not meet the criteria as seven of the bodies were ruled as animal attacks and spread out over ninety years. The other two were attributed to serial killers who, after being caught, confessed to both crimes. The other six were only ever listed as missing and did not meet the algorithm's requirements until three months ago. However, I have determined at least twenty-three individuals that have gone missing over the past year."
"That's when the system flagged a possible ghoul infestation when in fact, that was our vampiric resident," Julius said.
"That right." Remi's temporarily switched back to the sultry tone. It was one of her quirks that she talked like a robot when talking about raw information but switched to a more feminine tone when she wasn't using her powers.
"There is something else," Remi added. "Though. According to the subject's bank statements, he's been buying up large quantities of gold and silver in local pawn shops. His recent activities suggest that he plans to go off-world. However, I have no information on where to indicate what caused this change in behaviour. Until last year he seemed content with his current lifestyle. Did he say anything to indicate why he changed?" Remi asked.
Julius thought back to his interaction with the Vampire and felt his blood run cold as he recalled what Mathias had said to him. Something he had dismissed as empty boasting at the time.
"Mathias claimed that something called the Alnune was coming to destroy the Earth. Does the BPA have anything on file?"
"Not much. The Alnune are a space-faring species known for their powerful psionic abilities, eldritch army, and belief in their superiority over all other sentient life. The BPA has listed them as a non-threat." Remi said, returning to her mechanical tone.
"A non-threat?! How in nine hells are Lovecraftian Nazis a non-threat?! and why haven't I heard of them?!" Julius raged as he gripped his phone hard enough to risk breaking it.
"Alnune territory is over ten thousand light years from earth and is a highly contested area of space. The Alnune are in a war of extermination with their neighbours. On top of that, there is so much infighting and political backstabbing in their society it's a small miracle they haven't gone extinct."
"And the reason I wasn't informed about the Alnune?" Julius asked.
"You didn't ask."
Julius' squeezed, and his mobile phone shattered beneath his grip. He sighed. He really hated losing his phone, especially when it was his fault, which was why he kept a few spares in his coat. Dropping the broken telephone, Julius pulled out a second phone. The moment Julius pulled out the phone, it started to ring, and he answered it without a second thought.
"You look angry," Remi said. "Are you angry? You just broke your phone?"
"Well, I just found out that racist psionic aliens might be invading my planet, and I don't know anything about them," Julius replied
"That does sound upsetting," Remi agreed.
"I .... why …" Julius signed in defeat. "do you know where Mathias is yet?"
"The subject has purchased land and built property at 2721 Madge Ln in 1961," she responded.
"Thank you, Remi. Call Daphnie and give her all the details. I'll go get Mathias." Julius left the office, making his way out of the school. He had a Vampire to hunt.