by Jamie Davis
“Perfect.”
He followed her into the kitchen and helped her pull together a quick cheese and cracker plate with some grapes to sweeten things up. Jaz handed him a bottle of beer and poured herself a glass of wine. Soon the two of them were seated on the couch with the video surveillance footage air-streaming to the big flatscreen TV via an app on her laptop.
Dean watched as she sipped her wine and scrolled through her footage based on the timestamps from the facial recognition software. At one point a camera showed a woman approach a man they thought was Artur in the parking lot of the first funeral home. She was wearing an orange reflective vest. Dean remembered the health department nurses wearing those same vests as they screened the people at the scene. They watched as she went to a vehicle and drove around to pick Artur up. Then they drove away.
“I wonder who she is?” Dean asked.
“I think I remember a report that one of the health department workers was reported missing a few days after the first event,” Jaz said. “There were some who thought she might have become infected.”
She started tapping on her computer, searching through her files there. She snapped her fingers as she found what she was looking for.
“Felicity Richards,” Jaz said. She tapped a key on her keyboard, and a woman’s face, framed by long brunette hair popped up on the flatscreen.
The photo widened out as Jaz manipulated the image and Dean realized it was a picture of her work ID badge. Dean read the accompanying report, now on the screen next to her picture. She was a health department RN who had responded to the first scene that night at the funeral home. Two days later, her co-workers reported her missing after she didn’t come to work. A search of her home provided no useful information to the investigating detective. The report said there was no sign of foul play.
He snorted as he read that. Jaz looked his way with an eyebrow quirked up in question.
“I think we found evidence of foul play,” Dean replied to the unvoiced question. He pointed at the TV screen. “I’ve seen the way Artur uses his powers to charm and control his victims. My guess is, she’s either dead or undead at this point. The bastard probably got hungry and took a snack home with him.”
Jaz went back to tapping on her keyboard. “That’s a good thought, Dean. If there’s a fresh vampire out there, he’d have to feed her, and he’s not shy about leaving bodies behind. If we can find evidence of recent vampire kills, it might help us find a location where he’s hiding out.”
Dean pulled out his phone. “I can help with that. I’ll have Brook run a query on our 911 calls on the Station U ambulance to see if the crews saw any signs of recent victims. She’s pretty good at querying the system. I haven’t seen anything on my shifts, but I’ve been on dayshift since the funeral home call. The others might have run into something pertinent without knowing it.”
“Excellent idea. You check that while I log into the police database and see if they have seen anything like that.”
Dean settled in and sent a few text messages to his work colleagues while Jaz tapped away on the laptop next to him. While it wasn’t much of a date, he was enjoying her company, and the feeling seemed to be mutual. Things were progressing in their own strange way, but that appeared to be normal for the two of them, and he didn’t want to upset the delicate balance between work and personal attraction that seemed to be happening between them. He was happy at this point to take things slow.
Chapter 8
Victor swallowed a last delicious mouthful of fresh blood as he rolled off the naked woman beneath him. Her sightless, dead eyes still had the startled look in them from when he first started feeding. Across the room, he heard a satisfied sigh as Felicity finished off this victim’s boyfriend. The ill-fated college couple had blundered into their little trap when he and Felicity ran into them in a local tavern.
They two vampires had struck up a conversation with the couple and after a few drinks, offered to take them to find some “truly awesome weed,” as Felicity put it. She was turning out to be a valuable asset as she was so much better at negotiating this modern world than he was. Where he took things by brute force, she had shown him how a more circumspect approach made more sense.
Felicity also showed remarkable control over her urges for a young vampire, as long as she had fed recently. He liked that sign of strength. He had been tempted just to kill her outright after he fed off her but decided to turn her instead. It had been a while since he’d had a new protégé. So far, it had proven to be the right decision. She had taken to being undead very well and was reacting correctly under his thrall.
Artur looked over at her as she stood up and wiped the blood from around her mouth with the back of her hand. She was a messy eater, but then most youngsters were. It took a certain sense of control and finesse not to rip into a throat but rather to gently puncture the vessels beneath the skin and open them just enough to ensure a constant flow. That would come in time. Artur shrugged. In the meantime, let her have her fun.
Felicity giggled, standing there naked as she looked at the torn mess in both of the boy’s thighs where she had fed.
“I never thought of taking blood from there,” she giggled. “It feels so much more naughty that way.”
“Yes, my dear. But then, that’s what makes what we do so much fun, right?” Artur asked.
Felicity nodded and padded across the room to pull on her robe.
“Are we going to dispose of these two the same way we did the last one?”
“I think that’s best. Eventually, the authorities will start finding the bodies and search for the source of the attacks. Once the dolts realize what it is they’re seeing and realize it’s a collection of freshly killed bodies that keep showing up, that is.”
“Tell me again why we’re leaving them in a dumpster close to that big building downtown?”
“Because, my dear, if fresh bodies start showing up just outside of our esteemed local leader’s humble abode in the Nightwing building, the humans will have to start asking if he’s harboring a killer,” Artur said. He paused a moment and savored the deliciousness of his plan to destroy James Lee once and for all. “Couple that with the rest of my plans and you end up with the perfect crime. We’ll hurt both James Lee and Dean Flynn at once by implicating someone they both care about.”
Artur started towards the bathroom. He needed a shower.
“Come, join me and if you’re lucky, I’ll tell you more secrets about what I have planned for the humans of Elk City.”
Felicity cooed and shook off her robe as she followed her master into the bathroom. She pulled the door closed behind her leaving the two corpses alone in the darkened bedroom with a catatonic Brynne Garvey seated in the corner.
* * *
———
* * *
Brynne awakened and didn’t immediately know where she was. She looked around at the concrete walls and exposed pipes running along the ceiling overhead and assumed it was some sort of basement or underground room. There was an open door leading out, and Brynne stood up, pausing a moment because she felt a little unsteady on her feet. Brynne leaned against the wall for a moment until she regained her balance.
Taking a few steps, she walked through the door and into an underground garage. As soon as she turned the corner, she recognized which garage it was. She was in the basement of the Nightwing building, though she couldn’t remember coming down here. In fact, the last thing she remembered was failing her latest test with Celeste and going back to her rooms in the penthouse. While she spent most of her time with James, he had set up a personal space for her within the apartment so she could have some time to herself. Somehow, she must have blacked out and ended up down here. She had a massive headache, too. Maybe it was an allergy to goat’s blood. That stuff wasn’t the best-tasting blood she’d ever had. It was gamey and, coupled with the animal’s smell she wondered why she’d drunk it all.
As she approached the elevator to return upstairs, she
noticed her blood-covered T-shirt for the first time in her reflection in the polished steel elevator doors. That thing about vampires and not having reflections was a myth, though Brynne now wished it were true. She looked down in horror and scrubbed a hand across her shirt. It had dried which meant she’d fed somewhere and ended up back here before falling asleep. But what had she fed on? Brynne pulled out her phone and looked at it. It was almost morning. She shook her head again at the lost time and tapped in a number. The person on the other end picked up right away.
“Celeste, I think I’m in trouble.”
“Where are you?” The other vampire asked her. “I’ve been looking for you all night, ever since the nighttime guard called upstairs to say you’d told him you were going out. He tried to stop you, but you pushed him down and left the building.”
“I left the building?” Brynne thought of the implications of that considering the blood all over her and being unable to remember anything of the night before. “OhmyGod, OhmyGod, OhmyGod, Celeste. I think I’ve killed someone.”
“Where are you, Brynne? I’ll come get you. Don’t move.”
“I’m downstairs. I’m here in the building, in the garage.”
“Alright honey, don’t move,” Celeste said. “I’m coming right down.”
The phone disconnected before Brynne could finish saying, “I’m not going anywhere.”
A few minutes later, the always well-dressed Celeste stepped off the elevator and stopped in shock as she took in Brynne’s appearance.
“Great,” Brynne said. “I was hoping I didn’t look as bad as my reflection said I did.”
“Brynne, honey, where have you been? You look like you’ve been in a slaughter house.”
“That’s the problem, Celeste. I don’t know.” She pointed to the storeroom in the corner. “I woke up in the room over there dressed like this and with literally no memory of the last twelve hours.”
“What’s the last thing your remember?” Celeste asked.
“I remember being in my room upstairs. I was pissed off about failing the test earlier. I changed my clothes and lay down on my bed. I remember staring at the ceiling and feeling out of sorts that I couldn’t do better.” She looked down at her bloody shirt and shrugged. “The next thing I remember, I woke up looking like this. Just tell me I killed another goat and not something worse.”
Celeste shook her head with a grim smile. “That’s human blood, honey. I can smell it from here.”
Brynne started shaking with tremors as she realized what she must have done during her blackout. Tears welled in her eyes. She felt like a monster.
“We have to find out who it was,” Brynne said, casting frantic glances around the underground garage, searching for signs of a body or a bloody trail - anything. “Maybe they’re nearby. They might not be dead. We could save them.”
“Nope, you’re not going anywhere but straight upstairs to clean up,” Celeste said.
“I can’t go up to the apartment like this. James will know something is wrong.”
“Exactly why you’re coming up to my apartment first. We’ll get you cleaned up and try and clear your head. Maybe you’ll remember something about what happened.”
The older vampire led Brynne to the elevator with a helpful arm around her shoulders. Brynne tilted her head to one side and laid it on Celeste’s shoulder. She was devastated by what she had done and followed along with the other woman’s instructions without thinking.
Soon she found herself in Celeste’s shower, scrubbing the crusted and caked-on blood from her face, neck, chest, and arms. Celeste had come in to take her bloody clothes from the bathroom floor. Brynne assumed she’d dispose of them somewhere. It wouldn’t surprise her if James had a medical grade incinerator in the building somewhere.
When she finished in the shower, Brynne got out to find a pair of jeans and a clean black T-shirt. She toweled off and got dressed. While dressing, Brynne heard Celeste talking on the phone in the other room, but she couldn’t make out the conversation. She walked out of the bathroom and saw the other woman talking on her cell phone. Celeste held up a hand forestalling Brynne’s question while she answered whoever was on the other end of the line.
“Tell the officer I’ll be right down to assist him. Thank you for alerting me.” She tapped the phone to hang up the call and looked at Brynne.
“You look much better. Do you feel better?”
Brynne nodded. “Who was on the phone?”
“Oh, just a routine investigative request from the police. I have to head downstairs and meet with the officer about it after I take you upstairs.”
“What will I tell James?”
“Tell him you and I were out last night together for a girl’s night. He won’t pry beyond that. James is uncomfortable around feminine topics so leave it at that.”
“I don’t want to lie to him, Celeste. I have to tell him the truth.”
“We don’t know the truth. We don’t know anything other than you drank blood last night and made a bit of a mess. Let’s not borrow trouble. Just do as I say while I do some searching around.”
Brynne nodded, but she didn’t feel right about the decision. She knew something more had happened than just a messy feeding. Unless someone upended a bottle of fresh blood over her, she’d attacked someone. It was the only explanation for the way she looked when she woke up in the basement.
The two of them left Celeste’s apartment and rode up to the penthouse level. When they entered the apartment, James was watching the TV and had on the morning news. He looked up as they entered.
“Nice of you both to make your way home. I hope the evening was fun.”
“Um, yeah, it was,” Brynne stammered.
James pointed to the TV. “I’m glad you two were together last night. We’ve got to do some investigating and see if any of our current residents were out alone last night.”
“Why?” Celeste asked as she directed Brynne to head back to her rooms.
“Because,” James said. “Apparently, someone dumped two bodies in the dumpster in the alley behind our building. It looks like they were attacked by a vamp or maybe a shifter of some sort. We’ll know more when our investigators get a look at the bodies. Look into this Celeste. With everything else going on, we need to nip this sort of thing in the bud. If there’s a vampire rampaging out there killing people, we need to find them and put them down now. This is our problem to solve.”
Brynne froze for a moment as James was talking when she heard about the bodies. Celeste gave her a gentle push between her shoulder blades, and she started moving again.
“I’m already on it,” Celeste answered. “There’s an investigator from the police downstairs now. I was just coming up with Brynne, and then I was going to head down and follow up on it.”
Brynne kept walking as she listened to the conversation receding behind her. She knew what was happening now. They didn’t need to look or investigate anything. She was the rampaging vampire that James was talking about. Stepping through her door, she shut the room, blocking off the sounds from the rest of the apartment. Tears started rolling down her cheeks as Brynne contemplated what she’d done. She didn’t want to believe it, to believe that she was even capable of such a thing. Brynne thought of herself as a healer, not a killer. She kept telling herself that over and over again. Except it wasn’t true.
She sat down in a chair and stared at the blank, white wall, pondering for a long time how she could tell James what she’d done and whether he’d take the actions he said he’d take back in the main room. Would he put her down like a rabid dog? Her sobs overtook her as she drew up her knees to her chest and rocked in the chair while the tears flowed.
Chapter 9
The next morning came early for Dean. He stayed up late the night before at Jaz’s looking through video feeds and trying to track down any sign of the missing Felicity Richards. Both he and Jaz spent the night side-by-side working on solving yet another Unusual mystery. It was nice
being close to her, but it wasn’t leading them any closer to any romantic encounter in Dean’s eyes. He needed to remedy that. He knew they had to work on solving the problems of the zombie attacks, but he also had to work on getting Jaz to see him as more than a partner in her investigations. He knew how he felt about her. He wondered if she felt the same way.
All of this rolled through his mind as he drove through the dark, early-morning streets towards the station. The shift started at six, and he always thought it was a good idea to be early, especially since Freddy prepared a fantastic breakfast every day for the crews, both coming and going. He’d never been a fan of breakfast before this job, but that was before he had a four-star chef cooking a fresh meal for him whenever he came into work early.
Dean wasn’t disappointed. The smells of Freddy’s gourmet breakfast wafted out the squad room door as soon as he pulled it open. Barry was already there. He was seated and looked like he was digging into a freshly made omelet with a side of home fries and a cinnamon roll.
“Freddy, you made cinnamon rolls again?”
“I thought you all deserved it since you’ve been pulling extra shifts to handle the overload,” the shambling zombie chef said in his usual gravelly voice. He gave Dean a big, toothless grin when he sat down at the squad room table. “What’ll it be, Dean?”
“I’ll have a big ham and cheese omelet, please.”
“Coming right up.” Freddy headed back to the kitchen to whip up his culinary magic.
“Barry, where are Brook and Tammy?” Dean asked.
“Freddy said they'd been out on calls almost the entire shift,” Barry answered. “They must be beat.”
“I hope that doesn’t translate to a similar shift for us,” Dean suggested.
“Don’t jinx us.”
Dean heard the ambulance bay doors begin to open next door and he got up to check through the windows that overlooked the garage. Sure enough, the ambulance was backing in, with Tammy stepping out and helping guide it in while Brook drove. Dean pushed open the door just as the ambulance came to a stop. Tammy walked over to plug in the overhead extension cord that powered and charged all the equipment on board while the ambulance was parked in the station.