“The name refers to the Croft National Bank on Union Street,” Napier answered.
“And this Sofia Moretti…lives there?” Tanner probed.
“Yes,” Saul said, lips pinched together like he’d been sucking on a lemon, “because the Bank is secretly the seat of the New England Vampire Magistrate, Elliot Bankroft, and Moretti is Bankroft’s submagistrate.”
Tanner blinked. Twice. “Did you just say ‘vampire’?”
“Sadly, yes.”
Kim chimed in,
I just hadn’t really thought about it, Tanner admitted. What are they like? Do they fall in line with the popular mythos, or is that stuff wildly off base?
“Well, we don’t have time to brainstorm all night, so Moretti will have to do,” said Smith in an authoritative tone, snapping Tanner out of his mental conversation.
Smith then looked to each of the team leaders in the room, making a silent assessment. “Cassidy,” he said, “your team is to remain here on standby until your combat assistance is needed.”
“Yes, sir,” Cassidy replied.
“Romano, Berkowitz, Frasier, go to the Crossiron District and pick up where Cassidy’s team left off searching for signs of untoward preternatural activity,” Smith continued. “But do not, under any circumstances, step foot onto a single warded property without my express approval.”
The three men nodded in grave understanding.
“Montesano,” Smith finished, “head to the Bank to negotiate a deal with Bankroft and Moretti regarding the use of Moretti’s clairvoyance to locate the missing girls. And take Mr. Reiz here with you.”
Saul blanched. “No way. Vampires are dangerous. We are not taking Tanner along.”
“You most certainly are.” Smith crossed his arms. “Need I remind you that the revenant of Mordred has already proven his necromantic chimeras are strong enough to breach our wards? If we keep your brother here, he will be a stationary target, easy to find and simple to abduct. If we keep him on the move, it will be more difficult for Mordred’s revenant to make another attempt to recover the shard of the box.
“Additionally, Ms. Ballard clearly possesses quite a bit of knowledge regarding our enemies, knowledge that you will need to defeat them when this situation inevitably devolves into direct combat. It will be a lot easier to obtain that knowledge if Ms. Ballard is with you. As I’m sure you’re aware, Agent Reiz, phones are not always reliable in the presence of strong magic.”
Ford slipped her phone out of her coat pocket, showcasing the shattered screen. “Tell me about it.”
Saul’s shoulders slumped. “Fine. We’ll take Tanner. But if Bankroft tries to sink his fangs into my brother, I’m blaming you, boss.”
“Noted.” Smith made a shooing motion. “Now all of you get the hell out of here and do your jobs.”
Ten minutes later, Tanner found himself in what he had learned was Saul’s team car, squeezed in between Adeline Napier the necromancer and Jillian Ford the precog like the youngest child of three. Saul sat in the front passenger seat, and Montesano took the driver’s seat.
Montesano and Ford had made a quick detour down to the gym, changed into their own spare sets of clothes, and scrubbed off as much blood as they could using a sink. They both still had red smudges here and there, but they no longer looked like they’d been standing in the immediate vicinity of a man who’d popped like a water balloon.
The group left the garage of the Castle and headed east toward Union Street. As they approached the first intersection, the power in the neighborhood suddenly flared back to life. Traffic descended into a state of confusion at the abrupt reappearance of working stoplights, and they spent a few minutes trapped in a crush of cars in the middle of the intersection, eliciting several swears from Montesano.
Once they conquered that obstacle, the rest of the trip to Croft National Bank was smooth sailing.
Tanner had glanced at the three-story building in passing before, but when the car stopped at the light across from the Bank, he scrutinized the redbrick façade, the clean white trim, the tall windows bordered by red shutters. He wondered what sorts of sinister activities went on in the floors restricted to employees only.
Montesano parked the car in the empty lot behind the Bank, and everyone climbed out into the damp, cool night. The visible rooms of the nearby building were dark, the curtains drawn, yet Tanner still felt as if he was being watched from within the void beyond those arched windows.
I can’t believe Agent Smith thinks meeting vampires on their own turf in the middle of the night is safer than hanging out at the Castle, Tanner thought wryly. Then he recalled his disconcerting experience with the entrance to the library. Or maybe I can.
“Let me do the talking,” Montesano said quietly as they marched up to a set of glass doors. “I’m the one that Bankroft owes a favor, and the last time the two of you”—he glanced from Saul to Agent Napier—“tried to chat him up ‘politely,’ it ended with a call to the fire department and a five-figure settlement with the magistrate’s office.”
Saul scuffed his boot against the pavement. “I said I was sorry.”
“You didn’t mean it though,” Ford said. “In fact, you went around town bragging that you ‘left that fucking vamp with a crispy ass’ for about three months after you set him on fire.”
“He tried to bite me,” Saul said in his defense.
“No, he didn’t.” Napier rolled her eyes. “He was standing ten feet away from you.”
“He flashed his fangs at me, and you know how fast those bastards move. He could’ve latched onto my neck before I had a chance to raise a shield.”
“So, obviously,” Tanner muttered, “the only reasonable solution was to preemptively set him on fire?”
Saul pointed a warning finger at his brother. “Hey, hush up. You weren’t there, and you don’t know what real vampires are like.” He looked to Montesano. “Can’t we leave him in the car?”
“Sure,” Montesano answered. “If you want the car to get stolen by a harpy.”
Smith, per his promise, had provided Montesano and Ford with a succinct summary of what had occurred in their absence as the group was heading to the garage.
The story appeared to have given Montesano a headache. He’d rubbed his forehead no less than twenty-five times since the end of Smith’s retelling and their arrival at the Bank.
Saul harrumphed. “I swear to god, if Bankroft threatens Tanner in any way, I am going to set that leech on fire again.”
“You will do nothing,” Montesano said, “unless he presents himself as a legitimate threat. No ‘educated guesses.’”
“Whatever you say, sir.”
“Oh, how I wish I could believe you meant that.” Shaking his head, Montesano knocked on the left-hand door in a rhythmic cadence that must have been some kind of code.
A few seconds passed, and the locks on the door disengaged, accompanied by a faint flash that Tanner recognized as magic. The door hadn’t just been locked. It had also been warded.
Squinting, Tanner focused on the walls and the windows of the building, hunting for additional wards. To his delight, he managed to spot them: a web of small silvery symbols, some of which struck him as familiar, connected by threads of energy as fine as spider’s silk.
Assuming he didn’t die tonight at the hands of mythical figures brought to life, Tanner was looking forward to learning more about magic. It seemed a fascinating subject in the academic sense alone. The concept of practicing magic himself was nothing short of exhilarating.
“Remember,” Montesano said, pulling Tanner from his reverie, “no sudden moves.”
Then he hauled the
door open and ushered everyone inside the vampire’s lair.
The main room of the Bank was astoundingly generic, with the same faux-marble floors, worn red carpeting, and row of cheap wooden teller counters that Tanner had seen at nearly every other bank he’d visited in his life. The only thing out of place was a single door opposite the teller counters. Two short poles with a red velvet rope hooked between them sat in front of the door, marking it as off-limits to customers.
That door was the secret entrance to a strange world.
When the entry door swung shut behind Agent Napier, the caboose of their little train, the locks reengaged with another flash of energy. Half a second later, the roped-off door creaked open. A beanpole of a man ducked under the top of the doorframe and emerged into the main room.
The man was deathly pale, his eyes sunken in, and dark bags hung heavily above his prominent cheekbones. The eyes from which they hung were glassy, like the man was drugged, and his languid movements did nothing to dispel that impression.
He sluggishly waved the group over to the special door. “Master Bankroft offers his welcome to the agents of the PTAD. You may follow me down to the crypt.”
The crypt? Tanner almost shouted.
<“Crypts” are the houses of regional magistrates,> said Kim.
I see, Tanner said, though he was still unenthused about the idea of descending belowground into a structure named after a place where dead bodies were stored.
No one else appeared any happier about it than him—he got the impression the PTAD did not play well with the vampires—but they all sucked it up and shuffled through the special door. Which, naturally, opened into a narrow and poorly lit concrete stairwell that descended four whole stories.
At the bottom of the stairs, they came upon a thick metal door that could probably withstand a missile strike. The pale man pressed his palm to a silver circle that had been painted above the door’s handle, and the circle flashed in a similar way to the wards on the entry door upstairs. This time though, instead of a couple clicks, the loud clanks of several heavy-duty bolt locks vibrated through the floor.
It seemed vampires did not like uninvited guests.
The pale man grabbed the handle of the door and pulled it with a strength that belied his skeletal frame. The door slowly swung open with a bellowing groan that echoed up the stairwell, and soft white light chased away the dimness, followed by a wave of warm air that carried with it the faint murmurs of a far-off crowd.
Stepping out into the brightly lit corridor, the pale man said, “Please follow me.”
Tanner walked out of a dingy stairwell and into the lap of obscene luxury.
The floor transitioned from concrete to hardwood. The walls transitioned from a flat, featureless gray to a rich, deep burgundy. The light fixtures transitioned from sterile fluorescents in grimy clear cases to crystal chandeliers that glittered in the diffuse white glow of two dozen tiny bulbs tucked inside them. And the furniture, cheap but functional in the Bank above, transitioned to custom antique pieces carved from expensive wood by an artisan’s masterful hands.
The main corridor was almost forty yards long, extending well beyond the confines of the Bank, and almost twenty smaller hallways branched off from it, each just as lavishly decorated. The pale man ignored these intersecting halls and led the group straight down the main corridor, toward a set of imposing dark-wood doors at the very end.
On this walk through what Tanner dubbed “the underground palace,” they passed enormous oil paintings hanging from the walls and fine marble statues on short pedestals, all of which appeared to have been shipped straight from the Renaissance. There must have been over a billion dollars’ worth of art on display, and it was all Tanner could do not to drool.
Is this seriously a private collection? he wondered. This could be the contents of an entire museum.
said Kim.
Are they all this rich? Tanner asked, gawking as he passed a religious painting signed by Caravaggio.
Tanner eyed the double doors, beyond which lay, presumably, Elliot Bankroft. How so?
And now I understand why the PTAD doesn’t like vampires. There’s no way that the government can control them, is there?
And I’m guessing these magistrates can get away with even more than the average vampire? Tanner asked as the pale man knocked on one of the fancy wooden doors.
Kim answered as the double doors opened inward of their own accord,
Chapter Thirty-Three
Saul
Bankroft’s office looked just as gaudy as always, from the dark-wood accents to the leather chairs to the oversized solid-oak desk. A thousand books with titles in gold-leaf lettering along their spines lined two whole walls of inset shelving units, and Saul was certain that none of those books had ever been read; they were collector’s items, like ninety percent of the priceless antiquities Bankroft owned.
Infuriatingly, the scent of cigar smoke wafted off everything in the office: the wood-paneled walls, the thick carpet, the side tables topped with an assortment of expensive liquor bottles. As if the whole room had been transplanted from an English gentlemen’s club circa 1950.
The worst feature of the room, however, was the man sitting behind the desk.
At first glance, Bankroft came off as a trust-fund kid with tacky taste and far too much time on his hands. He handed out six-figure checks to local charities like they were party favors but also frequented every high-end club in the city, blowing huge amounts of money on drinks, drugs, and prostitutes.
The city papers only reported the former though—because Bankroft had a controlling stake in all the city papers, and so he got to control his own public narrative.
Using the vast wealth he’d accumulated over his centuries of not-quite-life, he’d also bought up vast swaths of real estate at the trough of the last recession. He’d become a predatory mogul, devouring any unfortunate homeowner or real estate company that got in his way. He’d ripped homes out from under the elderly, priced welfare-reliant families out of apartments, and steamrolled the city’s development plans for affordable housing in low-income areas.
But all of that nastiness had been buried under propaganda articles about how he’d launched his own affordable-housing initiative. What those articles failed to mention was that real estate prices were so damn high because Bankroft and Associates, Inc. had spearheaded the city’s gentrification efforts over the past decade.
And if that wasn’t enough to prove that the vampire was a self-serving duplicitous bastard, all you had to do was look at the way he treated his blood donors. Like the skeleton of a man who’d led them to the office.
While Bankroft didn’t officially condone the now banned practice of intentionally addicting people to the insidious drug that was vampire venom, he had forgone the common practic
e of rotating out willing blood donors to ensure they didn’t become addicted. Through inaction, he allowed donors to become venom junkies, and ultimately let them waste away under the long-term side effects.
His official policy was that, “Humans have free will, and therefore, I will not forbid them from donating blood in perpetuity, if that’s what they wish to do.”
God, Saul hated Elliot Bankroft. But tonight, they had to ask for his help.
As the door clicked shut behind his team and Tanner, the pale man having retreated from the room, Bankroft looked up from the screen of his computer. “Ah, Agent Montesano and associates,” he said in his faux-suave voice, “how may I help you this dreary evening?”
“I’ve come to call in that favor you owe me,” Jack replied. “And I’m afraid it’s in regard to an urgent matter, so we don’t have time to drink or dine.”
Bankroft always offered them food and alcohol. They always declined.
“Oh my. You sound even droller than usual. It must be serious.” Bankroft locked his computer screen, sat back in his tall chair, and raked his blood-red eyes across each one of them, as if they were fresh meat on display in a grocery store. “Please enlighten me as to what…”
He paused, and his finely plucked blond eyebrows drew together. His predatory gaze, now marred by a touch of genuine confusion, jumped back and forth between the two men with identical faces. “Pardon me, Agent Reiz, but you seem to have acquired a doppelgänger.”
“That’s my brother,” Saul growled, “and he’s off-limits.”
“Brother?” Bankroft scrutinized Tanner, but no obvious judgment resolved on his smarmy face. “I didn’t know you had a brother.”
“That wasn’t an oversight.”
Bankroft grinned, showcasing his fangs. “I see you haven’t learned any new manners since the last time we met.”
“And I never will.”
“Doesn’t surprise me in the least.” He reached into a square silver case next to his computer and pulled out a Cuban cigar. “Some dogs are just too dumb to learn new tricks.”
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