Kiss Of The Vampire
" The Girl With The Sharp Sword Part 2"
Mission 10 : Off
Denver drove slow through the city, window cracked just enough for the cold air to bite his face and keep him awake. The painkillers Chen gave him were kicking in, turning the throb in his side into a dull, distant hum. Streetlights blurred past in streaks of orange and white, the radio tuned low to some old rock station playing songs he half-remembered from before everything went to hell.
He kept replaying that voice in his head. Not like a hallucination—those came with fever or blood loss, and he knew the difference. This was sharper, warmer, like someone leaning over his shoulder with a smirk he could almost see. "Man, I thought he was a chick." And then the follow-up, easy as breathing: "Yeah, like you expected a muscular one?"
It wasn't the words that got him. It was the way they fit, like puzzle pieces slotting into grooves he didn't know were there. He could've answered without thinking—something snappy, maybe "Next time I'll ask for the pretty ones, happy?"—and the conversation would've rolled on, natural as anything. But there was nobody to say it to. Just empty truck cab and the faint smell of blood on his clothes.
By the time he pulled into the cracked parking lot behind his building in Five Points, the sky was starting to lighten along the edges— that bruised purple before dawn. He killed the engine, sat there a minute listening to the tick of cooling metal. The apartment building loomed above him, three stories of peeling brick and buzzing neon from the bar downstairs. Home sweet home.
He climbed the exterior stairs slow, favoring his stitched side, key scraping in the lock until the door swung open into darkness that smelled like stale smoke and takeout containers. Denver didn't bother with the lights. He knew the layout by heart: tiny kitchenette to the left, sagging couch straight ahead, bedroom barely big enough for the mattress on the floor.
He shrugged out of his jacket, wincing as the fabric pulled at the bandage, and tossed it over the back of a chair. The mirror in the bathroom caught him as he passed—face smeared with dirt, eyes too old for thirty-one, hair sticking up like he'd been dragged through a hedge backward. He looked like what he was: a man who'd spent half his life killing things that shouldn't exist.
Under the harsh fluorescent bulb, he peeled off his shirt and checked Chen's work. The stitches were neat, black thread pulling the skin together in three angry lines. He'd have new scars to add to the collection. He splashed water on his face, watched pink-tinged rivulets swirl down the drain, and tried to push the voice away.
But it lingered.
He wandered back into the living room, grabbed a beer from the fridge—warm, but whatever—and dropped onto the couch. The springs groaned under him. On the coffee table sat the only personal thing he bothered keeping out: an old photograph in a cheap frame. Him at sixteen, standing next to McDougall at some Bureau training ground out in the plains. The brigadier general had one arm slung around his shoulders, cigar clamped in his teeth, both of them squinting into the sun. Denver's face in the picture still had that sharp edge of grief, but there was something else too—pride, maybe. Or relief at finally belonging somewhere.
He stared at it a long time. McDougall had retired up to Montana last year, chasing trout and quiet. They still traded the occasional call, gruff check-ins that never dug too deep. Denver picked up his phone now, thumb hovering over the contact. It was early—too early—but the old man was always up before dawn.
The call connected on the third ring.
"Denver," McDougall's voice rumbled, thick with sleep but alert. "You better be calling with good news, boy."
"Put down a rogue tonight. Big one. Civilian kills."
A pause, then a low grunt of approval. "Good work. You hurt?"
"Scratches. Chen patched me."
Another pause, longer this time. "Something else on your mind. I can hear it."
Denver leaned forward, elbows on knees, beer forgotten. "You ever... hear things? After a bad hunt?"
"Like what? Ghost of Christmas past?"
"Like someone talking to you. Joking. Clear as day. But nobody's there."
Silence stretched. He could almost picture McDougall on his porch, coffee steaming in the cold mountain air, eyes narrowing.
"Once or twice," the old man said finally. "After my partner bought it outside Santa Fe. Thought I heard him bitching about the heat for months. Docs called it grief echo. Goes away eventually."
"This felt different." Denver's voice dropped. "Felt like I knew the voice. Like I was supposed to answer back."
McDougall sighed, the sound heavy with years. "World's full of holes, son. Things slip through. Memories get tangled. You get some rest. If it keeps up, come fish with me a spell. Clear your head."
"Yeah. Maybe."
They said their goodbyes, and Denver killed the call. He sat in the dim room a while longer, listening to the bar downstairs winding down—last call murmurs, chairs scraping, a drunk laughing too loud.
The voice didn't come back. But the space it left behind felt wider now, like a room he'd walked into and realized was missing half its furniture.
He finished the beer, set the bottle down careful, and stretched out on the couch without bothering to move to the bed. Sleep tugged at him, reluctant and uneasy. Just before he drifted off, one last thought surfaced, quiet but stubborn:
Whoever you were... come back and finish the damn joke.
Outside, the first real light of morning crept over Denver's rooftops, painting everything new and clean. But inside, the hollow waited.
Denver woke to the phone buzzing like an angry hornet on the coffee table. He groaned, rolled off the couch, and snatched it up without checking the screen. The stitches pulled sharp when he moved, a hot reminder of last night.
"Yeah," he rasped.
"Morning, sunshine." Ramirez again, sounding way too awake. "Brigadier wants you in the office. New case just dropped. High priority."
He rubbed sleep from his eyes, glanced at the clock—barely past nine. "I just closed a rogue twelve hours ago. Tell McDougall I'm still leaking."
"He knows. That's why he wants you specifically. Said something about 'your kind of weird.' Briefing in forty. Don't be late."
The line went dead. Denver stared at the phone a second, then tossed it aside and headed for the shower. Cold water first, to shock the fog out of his head, then hot to loosen the knots in his shoulders. By the time he was dressed—dark jeans, worn boots, fresh bandage under a black Henley—the voice from last night felt like a half-remembered dream. Almost.
Bureau headquarters sat in an unmarked six-story building downtown, the kind of place that looked like insurance offices from the outside and smelled like gun oil and bad coffee on the inside. Denver badged through security, took the elevator to sublevel three, and walked into the briefing room already halfway through a donut someone had left on the table.
McDougall was there, leaning against the far wall in civilian clothes—flannel shirt, jeans, boots that had seen real mountains. Retirement hadn't softened him much. His single silver star was gone, but the posture was the same: arms crossed, eyes sharp under heavy brows. Two other agents Denver knew by sight—Kowalski and Reyes—sat at the table flipping through tablets. A big screen on the wall showed a frozen security feed: grainy night-vision of a dark street, timestamped three nights ago.
McDougall nodded once. "Close the door."
Denver did, then dropped into a chair. "Ramirez said this is my kind of weird. Care to explain?"
The old man tapped a remote. The feed started playing.
Small town outside Colorado Springs—Peyton, population barely two thousand. Camera mounted above a gas station pump. At 02:17 a.m., a pickup truck pulls in, driver's door opens, and a man steps out. Mid-forties, flannel shirt, work boots. He starts fueling up, humming something the mic barely catches. Nothing unusual.
Then the shadows move wrong.
Not like a person walking past. More like the darkness itself peels away from the building and stretches, long and thin, across the concrete. The man doesn't notice at first. When he does, he freezes, nozzle still in his tank. The shadow keeps coming—tall now, taller than a man, edges flickering like bad reception. No face, no features, just absence shaped into something with arms and intent.
It touches him.
Not grabs—touches. One long tendril brushes his shoulder.
The man drops the nozzle, staggers back against the truck, and opens his mouth like he's screaming. No sound comes out. His eyes go wide, then roll white. Thirty seconds later he's on his knees, clawing at his own throat. Veins black under the skin, spreading fast from the point of contact. He collapses, convulses once, twice, then goes still.
The shadow folds back into itself and slips away between the pumps like smoke.
Video ends.
Room stayed quiet long enough for Denver to hear his own pulse.
"Three nights, four victims," McDougall said. "All small towns along the front range. Same pattern: lone person after midnight, shadow thing makes contact, victim dies in under a minute. No wounds, no toxins we can find. Autopsies show massive cellular necrosis—like every cell in their body decided to quit at once. We're calling it a wraith-class entity for now, but it doesn't match anything in the archives. Not demon, not vampire, not spirit. And it's escalating—one victim the first night, two the next, four if it keeps doubling tonight."
Kowalski whistled low. "Senate's already breathing down our necks. Werewolf reps think it's a vampire hit job. Vampire reps swear it's a devil. Everyone's pointing fingers, nobody's helping."
McDougall's eyes settled on Denver. "I want you on point. Take Reyes for backup. Start in Peyton—talk to locals, check the site, see if that thing left any trace we can track. And Denver…" He paused, voice dropping. "If you start hearing voices again, you tell me. No lone-wolf bullshit this time."
Denver met his gaze, felt that hollow spot twitch inside his chest. "Copy that."
He stood, grabbed a file folder off the table—photos, maps, preliminary reports—and headed for the door. Reyes fell in beside him without a word.
As they walked the corridor toward the armory, Denver couldn't shake the image frozen in his mind: that man at the pump, reaching out for help that never came. And underneath it, faint but stubborn, the ghost of a laugh he almost remembered.
Whatever this shadow was, it didn't just kill people.
It erased something deeper.
And Denver had the sudden, sick feeling he knew exactly what that felt like.
The drive south to Peyton took just over an hour, I-25 cutting through flat brown plains still dusted with last week's snow. Reyes rode shotgun, quiet most of the way, scrolling through the case file on her tablet. She was solid—late twenties, ex-military, short black hair always pulled back tight, eyes that missed nothing. They'd worked together a handful of times, enough to trust each other in a pinch but not enough to swap life stories.
Denver kept the radio off. The silence let his mind chew on things he didn't want it to. That security footage played on loop behind his eyes: the shadow stretching, touching, erasing. He'd seen people die a hundred ugly ways, but never like that—quiet, total, final. Like the man at the pump had been unmade instead of killed.
"You okay?" Reyes asked finally, glancing over. "You're gripping the wheel like it owes you money."
He loosened his fingers, flexed them. "Yeah. Just thinking about how fast that thing worked. Thirty seconds, start to finish."
"Less, if you count the blackout before he hit the ground." She tapped the screen. "No heat signature on infrared, no EMF spike, no residual magic the sweep team could tag. Whatever it is, it's clean."
Clean. That word stuck in his throat. Nothing about this felt clean.
Peyton was the kind of small town that time forgot on purpose—main street with a single stoplight, a diner that probably hadn't changed the menu since the eighties, grain silos looming on the edge like rusted sentinels. They rolled in around noon, winter sun low and harsh, turning everything the color of old bone.
The gas station sat on the highway fringe, pumps under a dented metal canopy, convenience store windows papered with faded ads for chewing tobacco and lottery tickets. Yellow Bureau tape still fluttered across the entrance, but the local sheriff's deputy had already cleared the scene for them. A bored kid in uniform leaned against his cruiser, nodding as Denver badged him.
"Place is all yours," the deputy said. "Folks are spooked. Nobody's bought gas here since it happened."
Denver ducked under the tape, boots crunching on gravel still stained dark where the victim had fallen. The air smelled like old gasoline and cold wind. Reyes started circling the pumps with a handheld scanner, brow furrowed in concentration.
He walked the exact path the man had taken in the video—truck bay, nozzle in hand, humming. Denver stopped at the spot where the shadow had reached out. Nothing visible now, no scorch marks, no residue. Just concrete cracked from years of freeze and thaw.
But something felt off.
Not wrong in the usual haunted-way—more like a pressure drop before a storm. The hairs on his arms lifted, and for a second the winter sunlight dimmed, as if clouds had slid across the sky. He looked up. Clear blue, not a wisp.
Then the voice came again, low and close, almost in his ear.
"Careful, man. You're standing right where it kissed him."
Denver spun, heart slamming against his ribs. Empty air. Reyes was twenty feet away, back turned, scanning the store wall. The deputy was scrolling his phone by the cruiser. Nobody near him.
His mouth went dry. "Who's there?" he said under his breath.
No answer. Just wind rattling the canopy overhead.
Reyes glanced back. "You say something?"
"No." He cleared his throat. "Thought I heard… never mind."
She studied him a beat longer, then went back to work.
Denver crouched, gloved fingers brushing the concrete. Cold, rough, ordinary. But underneath the ordinary, something thrummed—like a tuning fork struck hours ago and still vibrating if you pressed your ear to it. He closed his eyes, tried to chase the feeling.
Another whisper, softer this time, almost sad.
"It's looking for the cracks. The places people forgot."
His eyes snapped open. The sunlight was normal again. The pressure was gone. Just him kneeling in a dirty gas station lot with his pulse roaring in his ears.
Reyes walked over, scanner beeping negative. "Nothing. Not even background radiation worth noting." She hesitated. "You find something?"
Denver stood slowly, brushing grit off his jeans. "Maybe."
He didn't tell her about the voice. Not yet. McDougall's warning echoed—tell me if it keeps up—but saying it out loud felt like handing over the last piece of himself he still controlled.
Instead he nodded toward the diner across the road. "Let's talk to the waitress who found the body. Maybe she saw more than she thinks."
As they crossed the highway, Denver couldn't shake the chill that had nothing to do with January air. Whatever this shadow was, it didn't just kill.
It remembered things people weren't supposed to forget.
And for reasons he couldn't name, it felt like it remembered him too.
The diner smelled like bacon grease and fresh coffee, the kind of place where the vinyl booths had cracks patched with duct tape and the jukebox hadn't been updated since Clinton was president. A bell jingled over the door as Denver and Reyes stepped in, bringing a gust of cold air that made the waitress behind the counter look up sharp.
She was mid-forties, bleach-blonde hair pulled into a messy ponytail, name tag reading "Tina" in faded script. Her eyes were tired, red-rimmed like she hadn't slept much since the night it happened. The diner was half-empty—just a couple old farmers nursing mugs at the far end and a trucker demolishing a plate of eggs. Tina wiped her hands on her apron and nodded toward a corner booth.
"You the feds?" she asked, voice low, like saying it louder might summon whatever took that poor man.
"Bureau," Denver corrected gently, sliding into the booth. Reyes sat opposite, pulling out a small recorder but keeping it off for now. "We're looking into what happened across the road. You found him, right?"
Tina poured them coffee without asking—black, steaming, in heavy ceramic mugs that had chips along the rims. Her hands shook just a little as she set them down.
"Yeah. I close most nights. Was locking up around two-thirty, saw his truck still at the pump, lights on, door open. Figured he'd nodded off or something." She swallowed, staring into her own coffee like it held answers. "Walked over to check. He was... on the ground, curled up like he was cold. But his eyes..." She trailed off, voice cracking.
Denver leaned forward, keeping his tone soft. "Take your time."
Tina took a breath, steadying herself. "His eyes were open, but empty. Like nobody was home anymore. And his skin—it looked wrong. Gray, veins all black under it, spreading out from his shoulder like ink in water. I screamed, I think. Called 911. But he was already gone."
Reyes glanced at Denver, then back to Tina. "Did you see anything else? Shadows moving funny? Anything out of place?"
The waitress hesitated, fingers twisting the edge of her apron. "I told the sheriff no. Didn't want folks thinking I was crazy. But... yeah. When I first looked out the window, before I went over, there was this dark patch by the pumps. Like a puddle, but taller. Standing. Then it just... wasn't there anymore when I got outside."
Denver's stomach tightened. Same as the video. But hearing it from someone who'd stood ten feet from it made the hairs on his neck rise again.
"And the air," Tina added, almost whispering. "Felt heavy. Like right before a bad thunderstorm, when everything gets quiet and your ears pop. Made me sad for no reason. Like I'd lost somebody important, but I couldn't remember who."
That hit Denver harder than he expected. The hollow in his chest echoed, sharp and familiar. He masked it by sipping the coffee—bitter, strong, grounding.
"You hear anything?" Reyes pressed. "Voices? Sounds?"
Tina shook her head. "Just the wind. And him... gasping, maybe. But quiet."
They talked a bit more—Tina describing the victim as a regular, quiet guy who fixed tractors for a living, always tipped decent. No enemies, no reason anyone—or anything—would target him. By the time they wrapped up, the coffee was cold and Tina looked wrung out.
Outside, the sun had dipped lower, casting long shadows across the highway. Denver paused on the diner's steps, scanning the gas station again. The tape fluttered in the breeze, pumps standing silent like sentinels.
Reyes holstered her notebook. "She's solid. No reason to lie. Matches the footage."
"Yeah." Denver rubbed the back of his neck, feeling that pressure building again, subtle but insistent. "But that sadness she mentioned... that's new."
Before Reyes could respond, the voice slipped in once more—clear, amused, but edged with something urgent now.
"She's not wrong. It feeds on what's missing. On the holes we don't notice till it's too late."
Denver's breath caught. He whipped around, eyes darting to the parking lot, the road, the empty fields beyond. Nothing. Just Reyes staring at him, concern creasing her brow.
"You okay? You look like you saw a ghost."
He forced a nod, heart pounding. "Fine. Wind playing tricks."
But it wasn't the wind. And deep down, in that hollow place that kept aching, he knew the voice wasn't warning him about the shadow.
It was warning him about himself.
They climbed back into the truck, Reyes driving this time while Denver pulled up maps on his phone—next victim site twenty miles north, another gas station, same pattern. As they pulled onto the highway, he stared out the window at the passing plains, golden grass rippling under the fading light.
Whoever—or whatever—was talking to him, it knew more about this thing than the Bureau did.
And for the first time in years, Denver didn't feel quite so alone in the fight.
Even if his only ally was a ghost he couldn't remember.