by Mike Arsuaga
“Are you telling me the corporation involves itself only indirectly? The stories about an elite kidnapping force are false?”
“That’s correct. To the best of my knowledge, the corporation has no direct participation.”
“Will they give help in the form of information, identities, and such?”
Jerry’s face became guarded. Lawyer- not lover and friend- answered. “It depends on what’s requested.”
“Based on what you just told me, I need to speak with someone who has access to identities, as well as locations of the community members.”
“Are you talking about the city? The state? The region? The world? What?”
Lorna laughed. “Don’t be silly. My authority ends at the city line. All I worry about is what goes on in this town.”
“I can tell you the area has a high concentration of The Others. As many as three hundred live within fifteen miles of where we’re sitting. They cherish their privacy, and the corporation respects that.”
Lorna understood the desire for privacy, recalling stories her Gran had told about lynch mobs in the years following The Outing. A large minority of humans believed The Others should not get a pass for their history of hunting humans, although little direct evidence linking individuals to particular crimes existed. In the United States, fundamentalist religious groups led the attack, spurred by several television evangelists. Over time, the violence faded, with occasional outbursts, centered on rural areas of the Southeast or Midwest.
“Look, Jerry, I have six dead bodies on my hands. We’re pretty sure a lycan did it. I need help from the corporation to make DNA identification.” She slammed to a stop, not having meant to tell him so much.
Jerry took the information aboard. His mouth formed an “O” as all of the implications revealed themselves. “For sure you need to speak to someone important.”
“Why not cut through the crap? We can start at the top.”
Jerry made a little frown. “Good luck with that. Ed White’s schedule is so tight, even the head of my law firm, Mrs. Willis, has to set appointments a month in advance.” Lorna suspected Jerry referred to Edward White in the more casual form of address to imply a nonexistent familiarity. Name dropping was one of the few things she did not like about her lover.
“We’re on police business. We don’t need an appointment.”
“That dog doesn’t hunt, love. These aren’t the good old days when governments were the most powerful organizations. Our client has offices in over two hundred regions, municipalities, and countries. They’re probably the largest corporation in the world, with a possible genuflection to General Electronics, the military contractor. If you try to bull your way in, I promise they’ll have you, along with your police department, tied up in knots before you pass the security desk while Ed will be out the back, on his way to another country.”
Raising her eyebrows, Lorna turned on her warmest, most seductive expression. “Whatever you can do will help me a great deal.” Winking provocatively, she added, “And you, too. Now tell me something about this Ed White.”
“There’s not much to tell. He’s a vampire. His grandparents are The First Parents, Samantha and Jim White. His father, also named Ed, was in the litter of The First Children. Ed is Chairman and CEO. It doesn’t get any bigger than him.”
“If he’s not available, how do we get it done?”
“We can work through his staff. There are several assistants who might be helpful. Give me a day or two to see what I can come up with.”
After Jerry left, in the company of the same enthralled volunteer, Lorna decided to learn about vampires. Meyra Ogger’s bestselling book, Vampires Are Romulans; Lycans Are Klingons, provided her main reference. The title summed up what she’d learned from the book.
On the home screen, she touched the tab titled “Preemergent Care”. Out of curiosity, she wondered whether things had changed in her old home. The corporation-administered institute where Lorna had grown up boarded equal numbers of lycans and vampires. All pre-emergents, they didn’t walk until they were three or speak until five. Caring for such children posed a burden on any family, which is why so many, like her, ended up there.
Then the search passed to Ed White, CEO of Coven International.
The portraits accompanying his corporation biography captured her attention. The man’s beauty staggered her. An aura of pride accompanied by supreme confidence emanated from the rugged, square face in the frontal shot. Thick, burnt sienna-colored hair scrolled above as well as around the face with its two green eyes like jade lamps. Wide, prominent cheekbones form fitted the flesh to the jawbone. A straight nose with the slightest of upturns added a pleasing triangle to the profile picture, augmenting the brooding brow and jutting chin. Two wide thin lips, like an expert butcher’s cut, showed firmness and conveyed the demeanor of a man well used to getting what he wanted. In profile, their slight downturn suggested something deeper brooded underneath all the good looks.
Studying the face, Lorna experienced an inexplicable sense of recognition and connection. Had they met before? Maybe so. She recalled the dream conversations of her youth with a kind, dark haired woman. Those stopped after emergence. Then, recently, the woman returned, well sort of. All Lorna remembered after waking was being a spectator. No other details stuck, including any association with the head of Coven International. She dismissed the idea of prior acquaintance, conceding he would at least be interesting to meet. Then she chuckled at the ridiculous thought. There was about as much chance of crossing paths with him as of touching the hem of an archangel’s robe. She chalked the déjà vu moments up to having seen him on cable news or the Internet stream. The handsome marmoreal face with the tense, sculpted topography belonging to the man who could well be the most powerful being on earth stared back from the laptop screen, saying nothing.
The Board of Directors of Coven International, Inc. listed several members of the White family. Ed’s older half-brother and sister served in something called Special Operations. Three of his sons were listed farther down in the pecking order, project managers of various kinds. More of the board may have been relatives under different surnames. Females still practiced the tradition of giving up their family name and taking their husband’s when they married.
* * * *
A week passed with no word from Jerry. When he didn’t return her calls, she vowed to kick his ass to the curb the next time he came sniffing around for a booty call. Meanwhile, fingerprints proved the Gomez victims were ordinary humans. A few days later, the body of the son turned up in a culvert, minus several organs. He too turned out to be human—unlucky for the victim, but ordinary, nevertheless. Lorna ruled out conflict between covens of The Others, although the theory of an urban feral stayed in play.
A detail about the case still nagged in the back of her mind. The emblem they found in the boy’s room—a black shield with the Roman numeral “ten” inscribed in white. The symbol of The Tenth Legion, an organization named for Julius Caesar’s most loyal legion, it represented to The Others what the KKK had to African-Americans. The group had remained quiet for years, but no telling what cooked within the clandestine, network that crossed regions, and even borders, of the old nation-states. Every so often they reminded the world they were still around with a demonstration, or when authorities broke up a plot brewed by one of their cells.
Below the Tenth Legion, or X-10 symbol, sat the one that got her interest—a crude glyph of some kind, etched into a table top. Two serpents, each shaped like an “S” at right angles in a curving sort of swastika, made up one part. Whoever drew it had superimposed a female outline on the serpents. Lorna had seen it before, remembered from the depths of the pre-emergent dreams featuring the dark haired woman. Someone had painted it on a candle-lit stone wall of a windowless room. From this chamber, since earliest childhood, the lady in the dreams spoke to her with kind encouragement. Afterward, Lorna recalled no details, other than a sense of someone being in her corner
of the boxing ring called life. For certain, her parents never were.
Lorna sighed as she closed the folder, relegating it to Cold Case, disappointed at having lost the reason for meeting with a certain intriguing chief executive of CI.
Talk about shooting for the Moon!
With no word from or sight of Jerry, Lorna took matters into her own hands. She assumed he hit a brick wall with the corporation and didn’t want to face her. Normally, they didn’t visit one another at home unannounced, but by day ten, another element, an element of worry regarding his well-being entered the picture. Besides, she missed him.
After shift, she hopped the crosstown bus to his neighborhood. From frequent use of the line since meeting Jerry, she’d become friends with the regular bus driver, a loquacious black woman who saved her the jump seat near a smashed-out window at the front that provided minimal ventilation. On this day, however, another driver hefted the large steering wheel. He folded the jump seat away, peevishly making it clear only bus line employees could use it. A single open seat lay in the rear. With a sigh, Lorna accepted her fate. For the rest of the trip, she endured the humid grime, the smells of previous passengers, and the hard wooden benches in the stifle of this moving Black Hole of Calcutta.
Passing another long queue outside of a store selling a meager stock of house wares, she thought how almost all progress she’d seen in her lifetime had come in the area of electronic surveillance, spurred by the anti-terrorist wars. The advances had spilled over into computers, and information technology. For the average person, food or goods were in short supply, but the cornucopia of news, entertainment, and electronic application overflowed in its bounty.
The bus approached a steel gate that controlled entry to the community where Jerry lived, the only way in or out. Two armed and unfriendly guards checked IDs. At the sight of Lorna’s gold shield, their demeanor softened. A substantial brick wall covered the rest of the perimeter. Barbed wire laced with razors coiled along the top. Behind the barrier, the streets were lined with mature live oaks. Elegant tile-roofed houses sat back off the streets, surrounded by clumps of tropical-colored plants. For over sixty years, anyone who could afford it had retreated into these enclaves. When younger, such acts had offended Lorna’s egalitarian sensibilities, but over time, she realized the security bars backed up by double deadbolts on the points of ingress to her apartment were the same thing.
After clearing the gate, the bus coasted down the street. It jostled over a speed bump, and turned onto another street with a row of yellow-sided apartment townhomes. Their white trim seemed a little worn in spots—mold-covered parts with a sad, dark gray patina. Lorna then realized she’d never visited Jerry in the daytime, taking an extra minute to remember the location of his unit on the row. A sign hung in the window of the rental management company office for Jerry’s complex. In small print were the words “A subsidiary of CI.” The words were too small to read, even for lycan eyes, but she knew what they said because of the wolf’s head accompanying them, the corporation trademark. A couple of weeks ago, she’d never noticed the presence of the corporation, and now it seemed to be everywhere.
The mailbox on the ground floor landing confirmed the location of the apartment.
It must be convenient to have mail delivery. Lorna trudged seven blocks to a postal box.
The door to Jerry’s apartment, like all the others, showed a clean, glossy brown. The first on the right held a brass plaque with his name engraved on it, a special feature of the complex. Hammering on the door with her best authoritative cop knock, a prelude to possible future role playing, she expected a prompt answer.
Something felt awry. The loud knocking, which should have jarred the dead awake, met a long silence. Then, from the other side of the door, her enhanced hearing detected bursts of whispered conversation, together with hurried, scurrying noises. At least two people were in the apartment.
“Jerry,” she called out. “It’s me, Lorna. Is everything okay in there?”
In the process of reaching for her key, she stopped when the door cracked open. A flushed Jerry peeked out from the minimal aperture. His expression suggested, not too well, that she caught him unprepared for a surprise visit. The behavior raised Lorna’s cop suspicions. Moreover, he didn’t reckon on a lycan’s sense of smell.
A scent of sexual activity wafted out the slim door opening.
Lorna tensed and stood erect. With building anger, she peered beyond him into the apartment, glimpsing a female figure crossing the open doorway of a bedroom.
“What the hell’s going on?” Over his protests that she had no right to barge in to his apartment, Lorna pushed the door open. Storming into the bedroom, she encountered the auxiliary volunteer who escorted him the day he visited. The young woman knelt on the mattress, naked except for a white thong. When she saw Lorna, she rocked back on a pair of trim heels to arch her back, presenting two pert and erect breasts in the full flush of youth, wearing the expression of supreme confidence common to the young and foolish. Simpering lips curled on the cherubic face. She pushed a stray lock of corn-colored hair back into place. The vaporous artifacts of their mingled scents saturated the room.
For a second, the urge to make a blood kill swept through Lorna. Lycans didn’t take betrayal well. She’d been faithful to him during their time together, and she’d expected the same from him. At some level, the idea of morphing, tearing them to shreds, and feeding on their livers held appeal. But then she’d spend the rest of her life on the run. With the whole world against them, ferals, in particular the loners, didn’t last long. Besides, neither the climate of Tibet nor the Upper Amazon held much appeal.
With a snap of her head–the same kind she used to reset a wayward bang - she put away the dark urges and settled on a more rational course of action. “You’re out of here, sister.” She crossed the room, picking up the auxiliary volunteer by the waistband of the thong, and giving her the wedgie of a lifetime. With Lorna’s help, the younger woman did a tip-toed, butt-in-the-air sort of quick step in the direction of the door.
“Do something, Jerry!” she screamed in a petulant prom queen soprano whine that in most cases got what it wanted, but at the moment it wasn’t working so well. Jerry remained wide-eyed and immobile at the other end of the room.
With a free hand, Lorna swept up, in reverse order as they went, her rival’s clothes, abandoned on the way to the bedroom. After opening the front door, she tossed the girl, along with her garments, on the landing in an undignified pile of knees, skirt, elbows, camisole, and tan thigh.
Lorna slammed the door, cutting off a last whimpered request for Jerry to help. Then she turned to face him. “Why?” she demanded.
“I can’t do it anymore. You have no idea what it feels like to love someone who never ages. At first it seemed like a perfect deal for me, until I realized how twenty years from now, you’ll be the same, while I’ll be middle-aged with thin hair and a gut. I’m familiar with the situation between you and Mike Geurin. You’re–what–five years apart in age? You could pass for his daughter. How tough is it for him to see you every day, remembering how it used to be?”
Jerry had it all wrong. In all likelihood, she and Mike would still be together if he hadn’t filled up with anger and booze, leaving nothing for her. “That’s not why we broke up,” she started to say, but he spoke first. What he said stopped her cold.
“Your kind live so long, while our lives are so short. It’s not fair.”
All of the fight went out of her. “You’re right. It’s time for me to go.” Taking a utility ring from her belt, she detached the key to his apartment and tossed it on the mattress between them. “Be well, Jerry.” She turned around sharply, and walked out.
On the landing, the auxiliary volunteer had finished dressing. At Lorna’s approach, she backed away in fear. “Peace,” Lorna said quietly. “He’s all yours.” And she headed for the bus line.
It’s not fair… She turned the words over in her mind. The exa
ct same thing her mom had said the day she dropped her at the orphanage. Lorna’s dad and brother, hybrids like Mom, waited in the car they’d borrowed from a relative.
“Your kind live so long, while our lives are so short. It’s not fair,” Mom had complained to the intake staff. “In forty years, we’ll be old, while she’ll be beautiful. We have too little time left to waste fifteen of our precious years tending to a pre-emergent.”
Lorna remembered her mother walking through the glass doors of the orphanage, into the blazing daylight. The woman never looked back. Her receding form dwindled before disappearing into the waiting car. Left behind was a feeble brunette child with large, melancholy eyes who, while she wasn’t sure what had happened, suspected something had been taken from her, and began to cry with a weak mewling sound.
Why does it always have to be about how much time is or isn’t left?
CHAPTER THREE
By the time Lorna arrived, the investigation of the Fargo bank robbery was well underway. Yellow police tape stretched across the bank entrance. A couple of uniforms interviewed shaken witnesses outside the barrier. Three detectives milled around the roped-off area. At the far end of the room, the massive door to the vault containing the safety deposit boxes hung on its hinges, halfway open. Everyone else had cleared out.
Counters covered in faux marble balanced on dark wood trimmed in brass, where customers once filled out deposit slips, sat in even intervals down the middle. In an age of electronic banking and ATMs, few used them, but they gave the place a comfortable, old-time appearance. Parallel to the counters on each side and behind ran a row of teller windows protected by clear, bulletproof shields. Occupying the back third were the manager desks. Behind them, the open vault. A clutch of uniforms, detectives, and crime technicians buzzed in and out.
Lorna craned her neck toward the focus of investigative interest.