The Devil's Mouth (Alex Rains, Vampire Hunter Book 1) Read online

  The Devil’s Mouth

  By Matt Kincade

  Copyright © 2016 by Matt Kincade

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  Edited by Angela Brown

  Cover design by Jake Clark

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio

  Also by Matt Kincade:

  We Only Come Out At Night

  Keep up with Matt:

  Blog

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  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Epilogue

  About the author

  Acknowledgments:

  Special thanks to Angela Brown, whose eagle-eyed editing and gentle critiques helped me to no end. Any and all mistakes in the following manuscript are my fault, and are probably there because I ignored her advice. Thank you to Jake Clark for the awesome cover, and for putting up with my nit-picking. Great big thank-yous to Briana and Peter, my loyal beta readers, as well as Patty for her support and help with the Spanish language.

  “Life isn’t divided into genres. It’s a horrifying, romantic, tragic, comical, science-fiction cowboy detective novel … with a bit of pornography if you’re lucky.”

  -Alan Moore

  Prologue

  They huddled in the dark like hunted animals, more than a dozen of them, enduring the bitter cold of a summer night in the high desert. They carried backpacks, paper shopping bags, garbage sacks, gallon jugs of water. They wore blue jeans and battered sneakers, hooded sweatshirts and hand-me-down jackets.

  Mia sat on the rocky ground, clutching her backpack between her knees. Strangers sat to her left and right. Her hood was cinched tightly around her face, revealing only deep-brown eyes and a finely sculpted nose. She combed back an errant wisp of black hair with her finger then jammed her hands back into the warmth of her armpits.

  She sat there with the rest of them, waiting for the border-patrol truck to leave.

  The man next to her leaned in and said, “Hola. You speak English?”

  “Yes,” she replied.

  “Bueno. Will you practice English with me?” She looked at him and saw he was about her age, seventeen at the oldest. He had a round face and an unkempt mop of black hair, and his skin was deep brown. He held a dog-eared Spanish-English dictionary. He smiled at her, and she smiled back. “My name is José.”

  “I’m Mia,” she said. She briefly grasped his hand and found it warm and soft. She smiled again.

  “Are you here alone? Where is tu familia—your family?”

  “The only family I have left is in America.”

  “Your English is very good.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Are you… what is the word? Emocionado? For…for go to America?”

  “Excited?” She shrugged. “Yes. More scared. But excited, too.”

  The wall was a line in the darkness, a twenty-foot-high scab of rusting corrugated steel segregating northern Mexico from southern New Mexico. A hundred feet north, the Chihuahuan Desert became American soil.

  Crouched among the low desert scrub, the immigrants couldn’t see the border-patrol truck as it bounced along the dirt road on the American side of the wall, but they saw the glow of the headlights and heard the engine growl. They waited patiently, and finally the headlights receded and disappeared. The night was again complete.

  The coyote, the smuggler, stood up. His face was lined and weathered, pocked with acne scars. His mouth was unreadable under his mustache. He stood still for a moment, watching and listening. Finally he waved his hand and whispered, “Ahora. Andale.” He gestured the group to their feet. They shuffled single file down a low, sandy slope to the wall.

  The coyote reached a spot on the wall. After a moment of searching with his flashlight, he pried up a section of the corrugated steel. He gestured toward the tiny triangular hole in the border fence. One by one, they knelt and crawled on their hands and knees to America.

  The coyote stared at Mia as she wriggled through the tiny opening. She suppressed a shudder. Standing up on the other side of the wall, she brushed the dirt from her jeans as she looked around at the star-filled sky. America.

  The coyote came through last. He stood, straightened his cowboy hat, looked around, and motioned them forward.

  They walked north in the darkness for twenty minutes. When they reached a predetermined spot, the coyote motioned them to stop. They waited expectantly. Mia jammed her hands in her armpits again and stamped her feet to ward off the cold.

  The coyote turned his flashlight on, off, on, off. In response, headlights appeared in the darkness.

  It was a white delivery van, a truck cab attached to a boxy cargo bed with a roll-up door, the kind of thing that delivered produce or furniture. It sat idling, parked along a dirt track road in the middle of the desert. The group headed down a rocky slope and across a narrow wash to reach the waiting truck.

  The coyote counted heads. Satisfied, he motioned to the truck. The driver climbed out of the cab and looked over the crowd. His skin was pale in the headlights, and a jagged scar ran from his hairline to his chin. He looked Mia up and down. For the second time that night, she felt the gut-crawling sensation of being evaluated like a cut of meat.

  “Everybody in the truck,” said the driver, with the fainest hint of a Spanish accent.

  The immigrants threw their packs up onto the waist-high loading gate before climbing up. They settled in, sitting with their backs against the wall of the cargo bed. Mia’s new friend José made a step with his hands and helped her up. She put her hand on his head for support and fleetingly felt his clean, silky hair tickling her palm. She turned around to help him up.

  “Not you,” said the driver.

  José turned around. “Why?”

  “Because I’m hungry.” He grabbed the boy by his silky black hair and wrenched his head back.

  The boy yelled in protest, more anger than fear. His throat arched upward. He fought, but he was powerless against the driver’s arms; it was like fighting a pneumatic press. The driver opened his mouth to reveal knife-like canine teeth. He leaned down and tore into the boy’s neck.

  Blood sprayed in the red glow of the truck’s taillights.

  Mia screamed. The immigrants in the truck came awake like a frightened herd, crying out in fear and outrage.

  The coyote pulled a pistol. “Everybody stay put.”

  The sound of the driver’s rhythmic swallowing seemed impossibly loud. The boy struggled like a fish on a harpoon, less and less as his life drained away. He breathed his la
st breath with his eyes wide open, staring at Mia.

  She stared back in horror.

  Finished with his meal, the driver dropped the corpse at his feet. He grinned crazily, blood dripping from his teeth, riming his mouth like smeared lipstick and coating his chin. He wiped the blood from his face with the back of his hand. “Some merchandise always falls off the truck,” he said matter-of-factly.

  While the coyote continued to cover the prisoners with his pistol, the driver reached up and grabbed the rope pull on the cargo door. Before the door rolled shut, he smiled one more time, deliberately showing his bloody, needle-sharp fangs.

  “Bienvenidos a América.”

  He slammed the door shut.

  Chapter One

  You couldn’t see him, but he was there.

  Alex Rains lay among the scrub brush on a low, sandy ridge, in the middle of the southern New Mexico desert. He wore a sniper’s head-to-toe camouflage suit, adorned with shreds of burlap and bits of leaves. Viewed from five feet away he was invisible, vanishing completely into the surrounding mesquite and tumbleweed.

  White clouds churned through the blue sky above him, intermittently blotting out the afternoon sun. The wind over the landscape made a low, constant hiss.

  With a hunter’s patience, he raised his binoculars to his eyes and focused on the house.

  It was a modest prefab home, plopped down in the middle of nowhere, devoid of landscaping or any other trappings of habitation. A large metal outbuilding and a black sedan were the only other signs of humanity. A dirt driveway trailed off toward the horizon.

  Nothing moved. The curtains were drawn shut, the house silent. Alex lowered the binoculars from his eyes and wiped the sweat from his brow. He made a brief notation in a battered notebook and raised the binoculars again.

  In the distance he heard a car engine, a low growl. He refocused the binoculars on a yellow muscle car as it tore up the dirt driveway. A rooster tail of dust rose in its wake. Alex wrote in his notebook, 3:35 p.m. Woman arrives in yellow 1966 Pontiac GTO.

  He watched as the car skidded to a stop next to the house. The car door opened. A black haired, dark-skinned woman stepped out of the car. “Well, goddamn, look at you,” whispered Alex, with an almost comical cowboy drawl. He smirked as he adjusted the focus of the binoculars. “Ain’t you about hotter’n a two-dollar pistol.”

  She wore jeans and a black T-shirt. A rope of onyx hair fell down her back. As she glanced out over the desert, Alex caught a glimpse of her face. She was a harsh beauty, angular as a hatchet, the color of chocolate. Beneath a broad, flat nose, her full lips were set into a determined line. She scanned the desert with dark eyes, squinting against the sun, then turned back toward the house.

  She drew a pistol from her waistband, pulled back the slide, and approached the house.

  “Darlin’, just what in the hell are you up to?”

  Through the binoculars, he watched her storm up to the front door of the house. She banged on it with the flat of her hand. The muted thump reached Alex’s ears with a half-second delay.

  The door opened. Alex couldn’t see who was inside, but they admitted the black-haired woman. The door shut behind her.

  He panned the binoculars across the windows of the little house, seeing only closed curtains. Seconds ticked by.

  A gunshot rang out. Then four more in quick succession. Then a scream.

  “Ah, goddamn it,” Alex said. He lay, frozen in indecision. He scowled and ran a hand over his clean-shaved chin.

  Another scream, long and wrenching, trailing off into a moan of pure despair.

  “Shit. Goddamn it.” He paused for another second. “Shit.” He stood up and pulled off the camouflaged suit. Underneath he wore blue jeans and a blue Hawaiian shirt, patterned with white palm trees, unbuttoned over a white tank top.

  A short sprint brought him to a shallow valley, hiding a Ford Bronco so sun-bleached and rusted it could have originally been any color. He fell into the driver’s seat and turned the key. At the same time, he reached over to the passenger’s seat for his battered white cowboy hat, which he jammed onto his head. The engine started, and he gunned the throttle. The Bronco crashed over the low dunes and tore a path through the brush.

  Alex skidded the truck to a stop next to the yellow Pontiac and jumped out amid a cloud of dust and grit. From the backseat, he grabbed a katana in a black lacquered scabbard and tucked it into a specially made leather loop on his belt. He snatched up a short-barreled pump shotgun and dashed to the house.

  It was eerily quiet inside. Alex pressed his back against the siding next to the doorway. He took three quick breaths and turned to face the door.

  He angled the shotgun’s barrel toward the doorknob and pulled the trigger. The shotgun roared, and the latch disintegrated. He kicked the ruined door aside and brought up the gun as he shouldered his way through the door.

  The house was dark, lit only by the daylight spilling through the open door and the glow escaping from around the drawn curtains.

  The woman lay curled on the floor with her hands cuffed behind her back. The vampire was hunched over her in the middle of the living room, as if kissing her on the neck. A coffee table sat upended. A pistol lay among the glossy magazines sprawled across the floor.

  The vampire was barefoot and shirtless, wearing only sweatpants. He raised his head to reveal the jagged scar that ran the length of his face. He bared his bloody teeth.

  Blood spurted rhythmically from the girl’s neck. She lay motionless on the floor, her hair arranged around her head like a glossy black halo.

  The hunter fired. The vampire dove for cover behind the couch while buckshot hummed above his head. Alex put two shots through the couch as he circled. White stuffing exploded into the air.

  The vampire kicked the couch, which skidded across the hardwood floor and caught Alex in the shins. He grunted and tumbled forward onto the cushions. The shotgun flew from his hands.

  In the same instant, the vampire leapt to his feet and snatched up the shotgun. He grinned like a snarling dog, blood drizzling from his chin.

  Alex rolled off the couch as hot lead zinged by his cheek. He hit the floor and drew a chrome plated .45 automatic from the small of his back.

  The vampire rounded the couch.

  Alex fired from the floor. The big .45 crashed and the vampire’s right shoulder exploded in a haze of blood and bone. He screamed in agony, dropping the shotgun. Alex put another bullet through the vampire’s knee. The creature snarled more than screamed, and toppled to the floor. Alex rolled to his feet and blew out the other knee, followed by the vampire’s left shoulder.

  Splayed out, the vampire wriggled across the floor, painting broad stripes of blood on the hardwood. Alex stepped forward and planted a dusty snakeskin cowboy boot in the small of the vampire’s back.

  He heard a wheeze, the faintest of noises. He turned.

  The woman stared at him.

  Too weak to lift her head, she gazed up through half-lidded eyes. Blood pumped from the tear in her neck. Alex looked from the vampire, to her, then to the vampire again. He tossed his pistol onto the couch and drew his katana. Three feet of Japanese steel, polished to a liquid sheen, rose above his head.

  “Fuck you!” growled the thing on the floor.

  In response, Alex let the blade fall. His expression never changed. The vampire’s head thumped on the floor and rolled until it came to rest against the wall. The headless body twitched while a small lake of blood spread beneath the severed neck.

  The silence seemed unreal, anticlimactic. A haze of gunpowder smoke drifted through columns of sunlight, carved out by the bullet holes in the wall.

  Alex sheathed the sword. In an instant he was at the woman’s side. He set the .45 down on the floor next to her. “Easy now, darlin’. It’s all right,” he whispered, flashing a reassuring smile. With a magician’s flourish, he produced a handcuff key seemingly from thin air and unlocked the cuffs.

  He stripped off his Ha
waiian shirt, bunched it up, and pressed it against the gash in her neck. “You just hold that there, okay sugar? I’ll be back in a hot second.” He stood and sprinted outside. In a moment he returned with an olive-green canvas medic’s kit. He slapped a packet of QuikClot against her neck and covered it with gauze, then taped it down. He started an IV drip in her arm. “Don’t you worry. You’re gonna be just fine.” When he turned back to the first-aid kit, the handcuffs caught his eye. “Kinda weird this guy havin’ handcuffs just layin’ around.”

  “They’re mine,” he heard the woman say. When he turned his head, he saw his own gun pointing at his face. “Police,” she said. “Don’t fucking move.”

  “Well”—Alex chuckled as he raised his hands—“ain’t that a pisser?”

  Chapter Two

  “Turn around,” said the woman. Her voice was harsh but smooth, without a trace of an accent. Her dark eyes flashed angrily, and the black hair fell in her face.

  “Whatever you say, darlin,’” he said. “I’m just tryin’ to help. You just lost a heap of blood. They’re thirsty buggers.”

  “They?”

  “Aw, shit. You know. Vampires.”

  “Bullshit.”

  Over his shoulder, Alex said, “Honey, why else would that man wanna drink your blood?”

  “Because he was a sick fuck?”

  “Ain’t no denying that. He was sick all right. Guess I cured him, though.”

  “You cut off his head.”

  “Cured him, didn’t it? Nothin’ else does the trick. ’Cept fire or sunlight. I tell you what. Let’s drag him out into the sunlight, and if he bursts into flames, well, then you owe me a Coke.”

  “Shut up. Put your hands behind your head.”

  Alex laughed. “So, what’s a nice girl like you doin’ in a place like this?”