Ryan grinned. “That’s part of the fun of being an UrbExer. You never know what you’re going to find. Only this time, we found a bit more than we bargained for,” he added, and his grin slipped.
“We poked around and found a way into the old cellars. The roof had come down in a few places, but the whole thing was made with brick and stone, and they built stuff to last back then. Most of it was passable.” Ryan combed his fingers back through his hair. “But what got our attention was that there were no signs of animals in the cellars or tunnels. None at all. That’s very unusual.”
“If it was sealed up, maybe they couldn’t get in,” Teag suggested.
Ryan shook his head. “You’d be amazed. Even in newer buildings, rats and other critters always find ways in. That was the first thing that seemed very odd. Then, several members, each said they felt like they were being watched. That’s not usual for our group,” he said, leaning forward to rest his forearms on his knees. “We’ve been doing this long enough that we don’t jump at shadows. But I agree with them. I felt it too.”
“Could the developers have had security people out there?” I asked.
“No. We’re good at what we do,” he said, looking up to meet my gaze. “We know how to check for police or security before we explore. None of us fancies spending time in jail.”
“I still don’t see—”
“Several of us saw a woman in a long dress near the ruins,” Ryan cut me off. “We saw her in different places at different times, and no one said anything until after we started back. When we compared notes, we each had the same impression, even though we only glimpsed her before she disappeared.”
“What about the ivory disk?” I asked. “What made you send it to me?”
Ryan looked self-conscious. “One of us found it when we disturbed some dirt to find a way into the cellars. We couldn’t figure out where the entrance was underneath the ruins, so we used the old drawings and found where one of the tunnels came up near a well in the woods. Right after that, we started to see the ghost girl.”
“How much do you know about the Wellrights?” I asked. Part of me wanted to believe Ryan’s story. I was certainly convinced that something supernatural—and dangerous—was going on. But Ryan’s experiences could be explained away pretty easily as a combination of jitters and suggestion, especially if he had studied the family history or visited the new mansion.
“Before the incidents, not much,” Ryan admitted. “We focused on the terrain and the house plans, safety and exploration kinds of things. Until we visited, we weren’t even sure we could get into the cellars. Sometimes, there’s not much to see.”
“The disk belonged to Theodora Wellright,” I said, deciding to share a little of what we had learned. “She was in her twenties when she died in a Yellow Fever epidemic right before her fiancé returned from sea. She could be buried somewhere behind the old plantation, along with the others who died of the disease.”
“Do you think hers was one of the graves the developers accidentally dug up?”
“Maybe,” I replied. “But you still haven’t really told us why you’re so interested in the disk, interested enough to risk being outed as a trespasser or worse… maybe a grave robber.”
“We had nothing to do with the graves,” Ryan snapped, and I saw anger in his eyes. I had deliberately provoked him to see what kind of a reaction I would get, and his body language suggested that he was telling the truth. “And the reason I’m so intent on figuring out what’s going on is because the last time my group went out, one of my people got attacked. Something’s prowling around that forest, and I’ll be honest with you. Whatever it is scared the shit out of me.”
Now we’re getting somewhere, I thought. “Attacked how?” Teag asked.
Ryan leaned back in his chair and shook his head. “I don’t really know. That’s the hell of it. Tandy is one of our regular explorers. She’s tough—had two tours in the Army before she left the service. Not much freaks her out. We went back after dark the last time because we knew the developers had broken ground and we were trying to steer clear of their people. But we all wanted another look at the cellars, just in case the developers destroyed them.”
“But you said there was nothing in the cellars,” I said.
Ryan shook his head. “Tandy wasn’t attacked down there. We were in the forest, not far from where I had found the disk. Tandy was in the rear. She said she had the feeling there was something out there, and she was used to night patrol,” he added with a rueful grimace.
“It got real cold all of a sudden, even though the night had been warm. Andy and Jason both saw the ghost girl at the same time, off to the right of us,” Ryan recounted. “And then, Tandy screamed.” He looked like the memory unnerved him. “Tandy is not the screaming kind. She went down, and either she had a convulsion, or she was trying to fight off something no one else could see. We all went running back toward her, and the cold disappeared as quickly as it came.”
“And Tandy?” Teag asked.
Ryan looked from me to Teag as if he were desperate for us to believe him. “Tandy was almost unconscious. When she came around, she said that it felt like something very cold slipped through her, and was trying to drain all of her energy.” He met my gaze. “If we hadn’t somehow chased it off, I think it could have killed her. What kind of thing can do that? And why is it out there?”
I had a few ideas, and I figured Teag did, too. But I didn’t know Ryan well enough to say what was on my mind. “I don’t have an answer for you,” I replied. “But I’d like to get a look at the place where you found the disk for myself. How soon do you think you could take us out there?”
“I can’t go tonight,” Ryan said apologetically. “The group has another exploration planned. We’re going to look for the crypts beneath St. Roch’s church.”
“Can we come?” I asked without even thinking to shoot a glance at Teag. St. Roch’s, the plague church, the church that the Wellright family was careful to place as a bastion between them and the horrors of the old plantation. St. Roch’s had something to do with the hauntings and the supernatural attacks, I was sure of it.
My request startled Ryan, but Teag managed to take it in stride, and I wondered if he had been thinking the same thing. “Sure,” Ryan said, regaining his composure. “Have you ever been urban exploring before?”
If you only knew, I thought, thinking of the times Teag and Sorren and I had headed into abandoned and deserted buildings after supernatural threats. “Just a couple times,” I said, smiling disingenuously. “But I promise we won’t be any bother.”
Ryan seemed to make up his mind and nodded. “Okay. We’ll meet at seven.” He wrote down an address for me. “The church itself is long gone, but we believe some of the old cellars can be accessed through the utility tunnels underneath the buildings in that area. Wear clothing you don’t mind throwing out and waterproof shoes. If you mind bugs in your hair, cover it up. And bring good flashlights with fresh batteries.”
“See you there,” I assured him. “What about the Wellright plantation?”
Ryan’s smile slipped a little. He’s afraid, I thought. “I can take you another time if you don’t mind going after dark.”
I fully hoped to get Sorren to shadow us and let me know what his sharper vampire senses made of things. “That works,” I replied. “Looking forward to it.” Funny, but from the look on Ryan’s face, I would have said he wasn’t.
Sleep Soundly and Wake Not
After Ryan left, Teag and I closed up the store for the day and bid Maggie good night. Then Teag motioned for me to come to the office, where he had been doing some more online digging.
“I didn’t want to mention this in front of Ryan,” Teag said. “But I found out more about the development project near the old Wellright plantation. The good news is that because of the old graves; they’re going to be tied up in paperwork for a bit. So we shouldn’t have to worry about activity there.”
Something in
his tone made me wary. “Why do I have the feeling there’s more to it?”
Teag grinned. “Good instincts. I had to do a little hacking to get the official report. Turns out the Charleston coroner’s office has its panties in a wad over what they found when they opened the old caskets that the construction folks uncovered.”
I felt a shiver down my spine. “This isn’t going to be good, is it?”
“All of the bodies had their heads severed and placed upside-down above the bodies, and each one had a wooden stake through the rib cage.”
I met his gaze. “Someone thought they had been killed by vampires,” I said quietly. “We’ve got to find out what Sorren knows about this.”
Teag nodded somberly, his grin replaced by a worried expression. “I agree. And the sooner, the better. Because I have a theory about what attacked you the other night.”
“I’m not sure I want to know, but go ahead.”
“Think about that vision you had… What if there had been a vampire running around Charleston killing people back in 1732?” Teag speculated. “It wouldn’t be the first time the Alliance covered up a supernatural killing spree as an epidemic, especially since there really was a Yellow Fever outbreak at the time. And what if disturbing the graves has somehow not only roused Theodora’s ghost but others as well?”
He leaned toward me. “You said that Theodora’s journal talked about infernal creatures with long teeth. And both you and Ryan said that being attacked by one of the ghosts made you feel drained. What if they weren’t completely successful when they killed the vampire back in 1732, and the construction woke up his ghost?”
“A vampire’s ghost?” I echoed. “Draining energy instead of blood?”
Teag nodded. “It’s not unheard of. People talk about psi-vampires, people or spirits who can drain psychic or life energy.”
I made a face. “I think one of those was a college roommate of mine.”
Teag laughed. “I know I had one for a dissertation advisor. But seriously, this goes beyond grumpy people who bring everyone down. A real psychic or emotional vampire can get sustenance from the life force of other people. You won’t see citations in regular medical literature, but on the Darke Web there are some pretty reputable studies documenting it.” He paused. “Of course, in those cases, the psy-vamp was corporeal—not a ghost.”
“I want to know Sorren’s take on all this,” I said. “And I can’t shake the feeling that St. Roch’s is the key—I just don’t know what we’re looking for.
“We’ll find out soon enough,” Teag said drolly.
I had a lot on my mind as I headed home. I live in an old Greek Revival Charleston “single house,” a design style that the Holy City has claimed as its own. The footprint of the house is one room wide, with a single room on each side of a central hall. The front of the house faces into a walled garden, putting the skinny side of the house facing the sidewalk. The door to the street actually opens onto the wide front porch (what Charlestonians call a “piazza”). I bought the house from my parents when they moved to Charlotte, or I never would have been able to afford it. It had been in the family for more than a century. I loved it.
I parked my Mini Cooper at the curb. When I reached the door, I could hear Baxter, my Maltese dog, going nuts on the other side. Baxter is six pounds of pure attitude, a dog with the soul of a mastiff and the body of a Guinea pig.
The door swung open, and Baxter jumped and rolled at my feet. Sometimes I take him with me to the store, but dogs are sensitive to supernatural activity, and I noticed that taking him too often seemed to bother him. I don’t know what his extra-sharp senses picked up, and I’m not sure I want to know. I tried living in the apartment above the shop when I first moved back to town and being that close all the time to the objects we had tucked away in the back to get rid of made me jumpy as hell.
I put the mail on the counter, got Baxter’s leash, and took him for his evening walk. Despite my resolve to put the Wellright situation out of my mind for a little while, my thoughts kept coming back to it, and my sense of foreboding grew stronger. Something had stirred up the Wellright ghosts. Theodora seemed to be a dead woman with a mission. If she hadn’t died of Yellow Fever as accounts reported, and if the real cause of her death had been a vampire, then maybe whatever roused the vampire’s ghost from slumber had also brought Theodora back to sound the alarm.
I was well aware of the fact that most normal people don’t think these kinds of thoughts when they walk their dogs on a sunny summer afternoon. Then again, I’d never been like most people, even before my great-uncle Evanston decided to leave me a three-hundred and fifty-year-old antique shop and a mission to help save the world, one haunted piece of silverware at a time.
The sun was getting low in the sky by the time Baxter and I got home, and I had already speed-dialed for pizza delivery. I munched my veggie pizza deep in thought, sharing bits of broccoli with Baxter who thinks it’s the best treat in the world. Go figure.
I knew it was dangerous to go to St. Roch’s, but I didn’t see an alternative. Still, I didn’t want to go unprotected. I made sure I was wearing my agate necklace since the stone is good for warding away evil. I didn’t try to find my silver bracelet. Sorren had told me once that silver doesn’t work in real life like it does in the movies. It doesn’t kill vampires; it just irritates their very sensitive skin. That means a vampire will avoid silver, but a really determined one will deal with the welts later. Since we might be dealing with a vampire ghost, I didn’t think it would be worried about a rash. On a hunch, I took Theodora’s ivory disk and put it in my pocket.
As Ryan had suggested, I wore black jeans and a black t-shirt and sneakers with good tread. I had a lightweight black hoodie, more for concealing my face if necessary than because I expected to be cold. My cell phone was charged and in my pocket. I might not get a signal underground, but I could still take pictures. I stuffed a garlic bulb into the pocket of my hoodie, just to be safe, and I filled a small plastic bag with salt and put it in my other pocket. Salt was a kind of all-purpose evil repellent, and I figured it couldn’t hurt. I stuck a hand towel in my pocket as well, just in case there was something I wanted to pick up without touching. And I grabbed my heavy-duty flashlight with brand new batteries.
Baxter began to yip at the door, so I knew Teag was there to pick me up. I checked my cell phone again, hoping to have a message from Sorren, but no such luck. Sometimes work with the Alliance takes him off the grid. We would just have to do without him.
“Ready?” Teag asked as I slipped into the passenger seat.
“Yep. What did you tell Anthony? We might be ever-so-slightly trespassing.”
Teag chuckled. “He had to work late. No worries.”
“Did you bring any lucky charms?” I was feeling a little foolish, but at the same time, the whole idea of having a vampire ghost after us gave me the creeps.
“I brought the hamsa I bought in Greece a few years ago,” he said.
“You brought a Greek hamster?”
He rolled his eyes. “Hamsa. It protects against the evil eye.” He withdrew a woven cord from inside his t-shirt to reveal a charm in the shape of a hand with an eye in the middle. “I stuck a shaker of salt in my backpack, along with two flashlights, some sage to purify negative energy and a small chunk of amethyst to ward off psychic attack.” He paused. “Oh, and a bottle of water.”
“Holy water?”
“Mineral. I get thirsty.”
Between the two of us, we were about as well-prepared as we could get. I sincerely hoped we didn’t need any of the special items, but I felt safer knowing we had them.
Ryan had set the meeting place as a parking garage on the outside edge of Charleston’s historic district. Just a few blocks over were a number of important homes including the new Wellright mansion. On the other side of the garage were several blocks badly in need of renovation: some abandoned storefronts, low-rent retail shops and a boarded up house or two. Tourists didn’t com
e out this way, and neither did anyone else, by the looks of things.
Under normal conditions, I wouldn’t have set foot in a parking garage that looked like that. It was a 1960s architectural monstrosity, made of brick and steel, left to deteriorate. Graffiti was scrawled across one brick wall, and I almost expected it to read “abandon hope” but it wasn’t that poetic.
“Grim little place, isn’t it?” Teag said, looking around cautiously. I was starting to wish that I had worried more about encountering the living than the dead. A canister of pepper spray would have made me feel a lot better.
“Thanks for being on time.” Ryan’s voice made me jump. He was standing next to an old panel van, and three more people, also dressed in dark colors, were climbing out, a man and two women.
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Teag said, although I knew his real feelings were more ambivalent.
“Let me introduce you to who’s here tonight,” Ryan said. “Some of our folks couldn’t make it. This is Penny,” he added with a nod toward a dark-haired, petite woman who carried herself like she had been in the military. “Karen,” he said, acknowledging a blonde with a short, pixie cut and freckles that were jarringly at odds with the no-nonsense look in her eyes. She wore a form-fitting lycra jumpsuit that seemed a little overly noir until I saw the rock climber shoes on her feet and the coiled rope she carried over one shoulder.
“And Kurt,” Ryan added. The fourth member of their group, a red-headed man with wire-rimmed glasses and nervous blue eyes, gave me a nod.
“Everybody, this is Cassidy and Teag,” Ryan finished. I noticed the group wasn’t much for last names. I was just as glad to stay relatively anonymous, and since the group’s activities skirted the edges of the law, I figured the caution was justified. I noticed that none of Ryan’s team who were attacked at the old Wellright place were here tonight.
“The entrance to the service tunnel is over here,” Ryan said, gesturing for us to follow him.
To my surprise, our cars weren’t the only ones in the garage, but the others could generously be described as “clunkers.” No self-respecting car thief would be seen dead in any of them. Some sat on flat tires, suggesting that their owners had abandoned them. Others were covered with enough dust that it was clear no one had driven them in a long time. A few were up on blocks, missing wheels, and other parts. The whole garage felt stagnant and depressing, and I wondered if the fact that it was built on ground once consecrated for a plague church had anything to do with it.
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