The Beast Inside

by David Horrocks

  Alice found that she had become enthralled by her lessons in history, more eager than ever to learn all she could about her people and her new existence as part of their community. Her enthusiasm suited Katherine, as she too was eager for Alice to know more.

  A large fire had broken out in 1886, destroying fourteen of Calgary’s buildings in total. It left businesses and homes irreparably damaged in its wake. The official reports said that no one had been killed. However, in reality, five members of the town’s undead population were destroyed in the flames.

  The cause of the fire was never discovered, nor were the bodies that had burned to ash, but the local vampires started to band together and form a local power structure. Their new hierarchy was similar to those found in other locations around the continent and mirrored those that the ancients ruled over in the old world. They had recreated the exact same society that they had fled to the new world to escape from.

  In the aftermath of the fire, buildings were rebuilt with stone instead of wood, according to new construction laws that had been put into place. The laws were designed to better protect the immortals who resided there, as fire was a particularly deadly hazard for those who couldn’t escape into the waiting sun.

  Eight years after the fire, Calgary was officially named a city. With the aim of keeping order within the new hierarchy that ruled over the populace in secret, Thomas Macleod was appointed as the first vampire king of Calgary. He claimed the province of Alberta as a royal state, not under the rule of England this time, but under the full control of the vampires that lived in its shadows.

  No one was certain of the fact, but King Macleod was firmly believed to be an ancestor of the famous Colonel who shared the same surname. Under his leadership, Calgary would continue to prosper, becoming the shining beacon of civilisation that it was always meant to be.

  In 1896, migrants from all over the world started to pour into the city, in response to the offers of free homestead land. This was a plan initiated and supported by the local vampires, who wanted to bring in a greater supply of resources and food. It was all part of their continued attempts at making their new home a self-sustainable paradise. The amount of influence they had in the affairs of mortals was surprising to Alice and was something that she was becoming increasingly fascinated with.

  Katherine continued to teach Alice about local vampire history whenever she had the opportunity. She had learned that the discovery of oil in Alberta had caused the start of the boom that made Calgary stride towards its destiny as one of the largest cities in the country.

  The massive oil reserves were quickly claimed by a business that was run from behind the scenes by a particularly old and powerful vampire who went by the alias of Hank Wilson, a wealthy oil tycoon from Texas. He was an exceptionally greedy man who exploited the oil boom for his own gain.

  As the threat of war increased in Europe, more and more settlers arrived in the city, fleeing from the threat of conflict in the east. Their presence provided another boost to the local economy, driving it to new heights. During this time, tensions increased between vampire kind and the remaining werewolves that still hid around the outskirts of the fast expanding city as they lost more of their ancestral home and were driven into a panicked frenzy.

  After the war and its subsequent economic boom had ended, Calgary managed to avoid the problems caused by the United States Stock Market Crash. The depression didn't actually hit Alberta until decades later, mostly due to the efforts of the immortals as they used their immense power to influence the local businesses.

  Years later, another world war loomed on the horizon, bringing yet more waves of refugees who were fleeing the fighting from across the ocean. They entered the city, making their home there amongst countless other immigrants that had settled there over the decades.

  This rapid population growth resulted in a more diverse number of vampiric bloodlines appearing from countries much further east than vampires had previously been known to inhabit. They came bearing obscure powers and abilities that seemed alien to their western cousins, but all of them integrated into society just as easily as the rest.

  The complicated details of the secret history of Calgary were all starting to fall into place and Alice was grateful to Katherine for giving her the opportunity to learn about it all. She discovered under her mentor’s tutelage that two years after the second world war had ended, massive amounts of oil were discovered and once again claimed by Hank Wilson and his network of shell companies.

  This was the beginning of the city’s second oil boom and the fastest expansion they had experienced up to date. It also solidified Hank’s position as one of the most influential vampires within the city. It was a position that he still held up to the present day.

  In 1971, the Calgary Tower was built as a symbol of the city's new found wealth. It was more than just a tourist trap, as it became the new location for the king's royal court. The first skyscrapers were built around its base soon after and downtown quickly became dense with tall buildings that overshadowed anything that had been built there before.

  Two years later, the Arab Oil Embargo caused Calgary's oil export to increase exponentially. The city had never seen so much prosperity as its population almost doubled, creating a larger hunting ground for its immortal occupants.

  An economic slump in 1981 caused unemployment to soar due to a massive fall in oil prices. This sudden change started bickering between the different factions of vampires and also saw a brief rise in their own population as they tried to build armies to protect their holdings within the city.

  Over the next few years, werewolf attacks on immortals increased, as they were infuriated by the number of new vampires that had been spiralling out of control. The king found himself unable to defend his subjects from the threat and he couldn't get them to unite under one single banner either. This failure in leadership almost cost them everything that they had spent years building, as the city was almost overrun by a horde of werewolves that had banded together when the vampires could not.

  The first king of Calgary was branded as incompetent and was assassinated soon after, by an assailant who was thought to have fled the city straight after the murder.

  The next session seemed to be Katherine’s favourite part of Calgary’s history, as she spoke with more enthusiasm than she had done before. There was only a minor change in her attitude, but Alice had picked up on it and the excitement seemed to revolve around the woman who took Thomas Macleod's place upon the throne.

  Soon after the assassination of the king, Lady Renita Marquette, one of the first vampiric settlers in Calgary, came into power and was appointed as queen, with the promise of fixing everything that their former ruler had broken. She enforced strict rules that hadn't been used since the Dark Ages of Europe, vowing to bring the city out of its current slump and into a prosperous new age.

  Using an entourage of spies to stay informed and keep her subjects in line, the queen created the royal spy network in order to keep tabs on everyone within the city. They were her eyes and ears, observing the hidden plots and politics of the damned.

  It didn't take long for the new queen to put her plans into motion as she began to exploit the unclaimed masses of young vampires, who had been created to form the factional armies that had never been used. She sent them out as sacrifices on their supposed crusades to keep the werewolves at bay, while the attacks on other immortals within the city decreased drastically.

  In 1988, the Olympic Winter Games put the city on the world stage, fully backed by the queen’s private treasury. The economy was still in recovery and she knew that the event would boost it back to its former heights. Due to the games, the city of Calgary made its transition from a nondescript prairie city into a major cosmopolitan and diverse cultural centre. Queen Renita Marquette had achieved what many had deemed impossible, securing her rightful place upon the throne.

  It only took two more years for the city to fully recover, with oil prices increasi
ng once more. This was largely to do with the actions of the queen and her main supporter, the incredibly wealthy Hank Wilson. It wasn’t a selfless act though, as the oil tycoon had only worked alongside the queen to increase his own coffers.

  The golden age didn’t last as long as the queen had planned, seemingly to Katherine’s delight. It had been an incredibly dark night in 1994 when one of the smaller factions, lead by the vampiric witch Morgana, made an attempt at wrestling control of the city from Renita and her followers. They were quickly crushed by the combined might of the larger factions who had become dependent on the successful changes that their queen had made. They were content with Calgary's increased prosperity, even though the strict laws took away a lot of their former freedoms.

  Throughout the following year, various vampires who had supported Morgana's coup vanished without a trace. Others fled into the wilderness and were presumed to have been killed by the werewolves who were still somewhere out there. The witch herself decided to lay low, hiding away in her own private little enclave with the loyal few who survived.

  There was almost complete anarchy within the city on New Year's Eve on three separate years, as numerous cults and their offshoots believed without a doubt that the world was ending. They had predicted that the apocalypse would come on the final days of 1999, 2000 and then 2001. Each and every time they were put down by the queen's enforcer, Sir Chevalier, and every single time the world continued as normal. Their existence never came to an end as they were convinced it would, but the queen wouldn't tolerate their continued disruptions and had the majority of their leaders executed. However, the new popular theory was that the world would now end with the Mayan calendar in 2012.

  In the spring of 2003, a group of vampire hunters entered the city and started causing trouble. Their actions resulted in the death of various vampires, none of whom were considered to be particularly important. Their entire number were slaughtered by Sir Chevalier after the queen promised her people retribution. There had been no sign of any hunters within the city’s limits ever since.

  Katherine almost spat with distaste as she mentioned how Calgary had been ranked as the world's fifth cleanest city, mostly due to the efforts put in motion by the queen who constantly wanted recognition for her work. It had won awards for quality of life almost every year since her reign began, but that had been at the cost of so many lives that had been kept under wraps so that the mortal world wouldn’t hear of it.

  It was 2008 when the oil prices stopped escalating. The city had reached its peak in the economy and stopped making further progress. This caused the immortal population to fear that the city would stagnate and begin to rot if it wasn't stimulated again. None of the plans put into place by vampires since then seemed to have achieved the goal of kicking it back into gear and they worried that it could be the downfall of their still relatively new civilisation.

  2012 had soon arrived, but no one dared to step out of line despite them believing yet again that the world was going to end. Katherine told Alice that this was also the year that she moved into the city, bringing with her a massive fortune that everyone hoped would raise the city to even greater heights. She had invested her money into a variety of businesses, but did nothing to really improve the economy as a whole, as that was not her goal.

  Katherine's former friendship with the queen was called into question when her reasons for moving to the city remained unclear. It was then that their rivalry began to escalate in an endless game of chess. A game that Katherine was certain she could win.

  A few years later, a new faction of vampires appeared, starting a territory war with another group that had been in the city for nearly a century. The cult of the Serpent Temple dealt in vices, which the Moretti family had dabbled in for decades. Their business was sex, drugs and all manner of things that distracted the lower echelons of society. Both groups fought for control of the streets, with a stalemate forming after no apparent victor was found.

  The queen surprisingly left the factions to their private war, with others beginning to wonder if Katherine was distracting her from her royal duties. She told Alice that she was purposely keeping Queen Marquette’s attention focused on her, but her reasons for doing so remained unclear.

  Things had gotten worse in Calgary when 2017 rolled around. The stalemate between the street factions was only mirrored by the larger and more important one between Renita and Katherine. Neither could get the upper hand, as both of them desperately searched for a way to one up the other. This was when Alice wandered into the city and Katherine saw her potential as an ally and her ace in the hole.

  With Alice's help, Katherine had discovered that the werewolves no longer lingered at the edge of the city and that it was all a trick played by Queen Marquette's deal that she made with Vincent. Katherine knew the name. The dreaded wolf man was actually the older brother of Philippe Chevalier, a vampire skilled in the art of shapeshifting who had taught his own band of loyal followers to do the same. They now lived out in the wilderness for the sole purpose of keeping the werewolf legend alive.

  Thanks to Alice's vision, Katherine was now armed with knowledge that would be instrumental in the queen's downfall and would give her the chance to ascend to the throne. Alice had become the most invaluable tool in her benefactor’s arsenal.

  **********

  As Katherine's protege and companion, it was important for Alice to know about how things really worked within the city. The mortal world was just a mask, behind which the supernatural world could hide itself away from inquisitive eyes.

  A big part of maintaining the veil was recognising which parts of the city were directly controlled by vampires and which others their interests were at least vested in. Disrupting another immortals’ business was punishable with your own assets being taxed extensively, taken away entirely or possibly something even worse.

  The queen couldn't abide by the backstabbing that often harmed the prosperity of vampire kind, with a few exceptions to the rule that were usually saved for her closest friends and allies. Selfishness was an offense that could lead to execution by guillotine in the most extreme of cases, and so you had to know which deals to take and which to avoid at all costs. Existence as a vampire in Calgary was a social minefield that had to be traversed on a nightly basis, and ignorance would result in utter destruction.

  Survival depended on keeping informed and staying one step ahead of your rivals at all times. Despite the queen’s laws, certain individuals never stopped trying to steal all they could from their peers, doing their best to sabotage them at every turn. The real trick was stopping the queen from finding out about your plans, which was often near impossible due to her all seeing network of spies.

  Katherine told Alice about one of the most valued companies in the city for those that fed on mortal blood. Mr Shine's Cleaning Services was an expensive, but necessary business that helped the city retain its sterling reputation. To the untrained eye, it looked like a regular house cleaning service that was only reachable by phone.

  However, the backstreet business was actually a front for something much more sinister. Their specialised service dealt in cleaning up messes that had been left behind by botched feeding attempts, but their high end fees meant that only those that were well off could afford the executive packages they offered. They would clear up anything from corpses to nasty spills and kills.

  Mr Shine himself was always thought to be a made up mascot, but the voice that answered the phone had never changed over the years. Callers were always met with the same straight to business, no nonsense attitude that had served the city for generations.

  The employees that turned up when called may have seemed a little braindead, acting like zombies as they cleansed the area, but Katherine confirmed that it was just a simple form of mind control that was used so they didn’t remember anything and couldn’t go blabbing about your grubby little secrets.

  In a city full of rivals who sought your downfall, anonymity was key, and w
ith Mr Shine you always got exactly what you paid for. A high quality service that always delivered results.

  Less expensive, but arguably just as important, Calgary Meatpacking Ltd was run by the Moretti family. Katherine mentioned that they were one of the oldest living bloodlines of vampires within the city and that they were the ones fighting off the cult of the Serpent Temple in a battle for control over the streets of Calgary.

  The Moretti's supplied blood packs that contained the essence of cows, pigs or even human blood to any who could afford to pay their relatively low rates. Their valued business was the lazy option for those who didn't want to spend their nights hunting for food and many in the city appreciated the assistance. The blood wasn't always fresh, but that was a small price for the convenience. It was located somewhere within the industrial sector.

  Katherine explained that the Moretti family ran a delivery service, but they would give a discount if you turned up yourself and rang the buzzer by the entrance around the back. Fortunately for Alice, her benefactor had plenty of blood in stock, so she didn't have to resort to spending money on the family's service.

  For those with more expensive tastes, the Red Rose Emporium: Modelling and Escort Agency could satisfy them. Katherine admitted to using them herself on occasion and mentioned that making an appointment by phone could get you whatever meal you desired from their extensive catalogue of escorts, models and blood donors.

  It was a relatively new business that was run by the cult of the Serpent Temple, who paid regular bribes to the police department so that they were never interrupted by law enforcement. Their base of operations was a thirteenth floor office in one of the many skyscrapers downtown.