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“At 10:30AM, the police received a report that a man was found lying in the back alley of Marble Road, North Point. The fourty-year-old victim was certified dead at the scene. After a preliminary investigation, it’s confirmed that there’s no sign of obvious scars on the body except for bite marks in the neck region, with excessive blood loss leading to death. Police have classified this as a case of dead body discovery, and indicated to conduct further investigation from the aspect of homicide…”
I walked up to Kou as the 24-hour TV news channel was on in the living room. The email on her laptop screen drew my attention.
“Vampires?” In confusion, I uttered the keyword of the whole passage.
“So they really do exist huh?” Kou seemed rather surprised on the other hand.
“What’re those?”
“Wait… you haven’t heard of vampires before?” She dropped her jaws as I asked. “They’re quite the star of mysterious creatures! How could you not know them as a mageka?”
“What have you taken magekas for… Well I might have heard of them in Glace with a different name. Now, being a paranormal fanatic, could you perhaps show me some information you have about this species?”
In response to my request, she nodded and proceeded to pull out a thick book on the bookshelf close by. Seemingly in a search for something, she flipped the pages on her palm over and over.
“Take a look at this.” Finally, fingers landed on a particular page, she handed the book over to me.
Taking the “Encyclopaedia to World’s Creatures of Wonder” from her hands, I started scanning through the page featuring vampires which she addressed.
According to the book, the word “vampire” originated from Eastern Europe, and it referred to undecayed corpses which walked out of the coffins every night to thirst for human blood. However, without solid evidence which could validate their existence, this dark group of species rumoured to sustain themselves on blood had been classified as mysterious creatures.
Some people had been studying them, whereas some made use of them as the main theme for producing all kinds of media and entertainment - novels, films, computer games, animations - you name it. Vampire stories were no stranger to most folks out there.
It even wrote that to kill a vampire, you must first locate its hideout at dusk, then impale its heart with a timber pile, separate its head from the body, and lastly, burn them down in flames.
Huh, never knew something as intriguing exists in this world, though this sounds to me as a mere myth.
“This is rather interesting,” I closed the book and returned it to its owner, “but why would our client stick with the word choice ‘vampire’ for the murderers, instead of something like ‘atypical psychopathic killers’?”
“I guess this is somehow related to the recent rumours around the city,” said Kou.
“Rumours? What kind of rumours?” What Kou brought up alerted me. This must be relevant to the incoming request in some way.
The email we had just received was signed off by “Mr. Chong”, who demanded for execution, elimination and banishment of all vampires in existence within the city, and he was willing to pay for whatever cost it might take.
When the word “elimination” came to my attention at first, I was determined to turn this down since it was stated in our house rules to reject any requests involving the “killing of human and other living creatures of any kind”. But then, looking at the word “vampires”, my stance switched from “strong ‘NO’” to “under consideration”. Never had I heard of them in Glace, nor did I have any idea what exactly they were.
“There have been peculiar disappearances and deaths from time to time in recent years, with excessive blood loss as the cause of death and wounds in the neck region being the things in common. No traces of fresh blood have been located at the crime scenes either. The police have always ruled these cases as ‘suspicious’, yet have never been able to identify the reason behind these cases and the perpetrators’ identity, and they would always end up unsolved. As a result, there have been theories of these victims being murdered by certain kinds of non-human beings, which the ‘vampire theory’ currently prevails.”
The news report in the background had just finished a turn and came back to the North Point case. Kou and I turned our heads towards the television simultaneously and watched through it in silence.
“Could it be that…” Pointing my finger at the screen, I felt a hunch kicking in.
“People are already discussing it on the online forum.” Having guessed what I was about to ask, she opened a website with posts all over the page. Despite the differences in their arguments, they were all unanimous towards the idea that the case aroused suspicion. Their deductions were not exactly nonsense, since the most apparent feature of a vampire’s doing was to bite someone on the neck and suck their blood out.
But isn’t this too shallow to be true?
“I see. But wouldn’t it be a result of the police’s insufficiency? I mean it would be more logical to list this kind of hard-to-solve case as a cold case, instead of associating it with some rumoured creatures of questionable existence.”
“Word on the street is that the deceased was found wandering around the streets at night with bloody eyes and sharp fangs - exactly how vampires would look like,” with the whole chain of events and rumours on Kou’s radar for some time, she responded without much pause for thought.
She even attempted to scare me with her “vampire” impression, which I gave a blank face in return, signalling to her that the poor acting was to no avail.
Pulling a face in the middle of a crucial conversation… How mature. Sigh… Can you please take this more seriously?
“Our eyes can be easily deceived by the dim night streets. Also, that might just be a story made up by someone,” I continued until after her silly face was out of sight.
“But there’s no sign of a single drop of blood at the scene, despite the cause of death being excessive blood loss. Now how would you justify this?” Kou refuted.
“It’s still possible that the victim was assaulted at a certain spot, lost a lot of blood, ran his way to that back alley, and eventually succumbed to death out of his remaining stamina. This explanation would do. Why must the case be tied to ‘vampires’ anyways?” I had my doubts regarding this association.
“Now here’s the thing: the police were unable to identify the location where the assault that could have led to severe blood loss of the victims took place for all these cases similar in nature…” As Kou was about to bombard me with all the evidence she had, something crossed her mind, “Wait , you’re a mageka right? Aren’t you supposed to lean towards the belief of their existence, instead of attempting to overthrow the ‘vampire’ theory?”
I chuckled. I should have known she would raise her suspicion at this very timing - I mean it would be odd for her not to do so.
“It’s not that I don’t believe in their existence. I just want to sort out whether this is a misunderstanding on the human’s end or if they actually exist before jumping to conclusions.” I closed my eyes.
Her brows furrowed in confusion.
There have always been beings which we labelled as “mysterious creatures”. Nonetheless, some of them were merely fictional, while some people made use of these myths and creatures’ characteristics to mess around and cover up their schemes underneath the surface.
“I kept throwing out questions because I wanted to make things clear. And after hearing what you have to say, it does seem like there’s something fishy about the rumours. This case sounds like fun. You may go ahead and arrange a meeting with the client.”
In the end, I decided to take it.
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