Grave Illusions

by Lina Gardiner

  “Drake isn’t in his office,” she told Britt. “He had to attend a briefing, but he gave me the combination to the safe in his room.”

  They both reached for the doorknob at the same time. His hand pressed over hers and their eyes met. She waited for him to pull back in horror. He didn’t. The warmth of his hand on hers felt foreign yet wonderful.

  “You’re wasting your time,” she said, pulling her hand away before he realized that he was touching her. She didn’t want to see that look of horror that she’d seen in his apartment when she’d first shown him her vampire countenance. “The door’s locked. I’ve got the key.”

  After unlocking the office door, she led him inside.

  He shouldn’t have touched Jess like that. It was apparent she didn’t like it. At least they hadn’t been spotted by any of the boys in blue. That made Britt feel better about being here. He didn’t want anyone asking questions.

  Britt closed and locked the door behind them. Jess twirled the combination lock on the safe and took out the faded blue file folders stuffed thick with papers.

  Britt tried to peer over her shoulder to get a look at the folders while she carried them to the table in the center of the room. “Why does Randy have so many personnel records? My file was only half that thick in ten years. Randy was a cop for less than three years.”

  She opened the first folder, pulled out the stack of papers, split it in two and handed half to Britt. “Let’s find out.”

  “What exactly are we looking for?” he asked.

  “Anything suspicious. Anything too pat.”

  After poring over every inch of paperwork, Britt rubbed his forehead. Randy’s records consisted of the usual things, leave taken, and performance reviews. Medical records which probably meant he’d been human for part of his time on the force. Unless he’d been able to fake the records somehow. Still, he continued to quarry for something—anything.

  What he finally found came as a complete shock. Randy had been written up on several occasions for improper conduct. No action had been taken, and the files had been closed each time. How’d he get away with that? No wonder his file was so thick. Not to mention, as Randy’s partner, Britt should have been privy to that kind of information.

  Near the end he found a report written two weeks before Randy’s demise. Excitement coursed through him as he snatched the paper out of the stack and desperately looked it over. Surely here there would be an indication that Randy was faking his report. He double checked the blood work against the last one. Hoping against hope that it would be exactly the same as the time before, indicating that it had been copied. Anything that might prove Britt wasn’t a murderer. His hands started to shake when he realized there was nothing there.

  “Find something?” Jess asked, as if she could sense his turmoil.

  “Britt’s shoulders slumped and he dropped the stack of papers onto the table with finality. “Not a damn thing except that Randy got away with some improper conduct.” Even worse, Randy had had a clean bill of health. “In fact, Randy’s last medical said he was in A-one shape. His blood pressure was perfect, his respiration great, even his eyesight was better than 20-20.”

  “Really.” Something in the way she said it made him lift his head and look at her.

  “What are you thinking?”

  “I think you have found something after all. Look at this.” She held out a medical form from Randy’s first year on the force.

  “Same thing,” Britt said. “What’s different? His health was great.”

  She pointed at the very small line at the bottom of the page. Randy had been slightly myopic in his first year on the force. He didn’t need glasses, but the optometrist made a note that he wanted Randy to have his eyes checked again within a year.

  “Wait!” She flipped through his records again. “He had his next eye exam all right, and his vision was perfect the second year. Better than perfect.” She raised her beautiful eyebrows cynically. “Right under their noses.”

  “Couldn’t his vision have just improved?” Of course he wanted to believe he hadn’t killed Randy, but his own guilt wouldn’t let him off that easily.

  “Vision might be able to improve slightly, but Randy’s vision is amazing. My guess is he had pretty good night vision too.”

  “I can’t accept that. Not yet. We need a hell of a lot more evidence than just good eyesight to make me believe Randy’s a vampire and probably still alive.”

  “We’re not done looking yet.”

  “Did Drake look through this folder?” Britt asked, reaching for a file sitting in the middle of the table.

  “No. Not yet. He told me to look them over and let him know what we found. He’s been pretty busy trying to keep the task force a secret. He’s been doing a lot of covering these days because some people in the precinct are getting curious. Maybe too curious.”

  Jess’s cell phone rang. She answered it and listened silently. Her eyes widened and she looked directly at Britt. “We’ll be right there.”

  Britt grabbed the paperwork off the desk and moved to the other side of the office. He stuffed the folders back into the safe and twirled the tumbler. “Where are we going?”

  “Sampson wants to see us right away.”

  “Any idea why?”

  “It seems he’s made a discovery. One he’s very excited about.”

  “Are you going to keep me in the dark or tell me what the hell it is?” Britt growled, making Jess’s eyes light up with amusement.

  “Sampson will explain the whole thing when we get there.”

  “Where’s his office?”

  “The other side of town. Let’s go.”

  “He doesn’t work at the precinct?”

  “No. He’s a very specialized Forensic Vampirologist. A key member of our team, but he doesn’t work for the police force directly. They couldn’t afford his wages.”

  “Who does he work for?”

  “Me,” she said simply before she left Drake’s office.

  Sampson’s morgue was in a subbasement lab in a geochemical company’s complex. Jess led him down pristine white hallways and past uniformed medical types with masks and lab coats and piercing stares that made Britt conscious of not belonging here.

  Jess opened a door to what looked like a janitor’s closet. It was unmarked and insignificant, but it opened into a theatre overlooking a large morgue.

  “There you are, Jess,” Sampson said from below the viewing platform. He moved from one slab to another dressed in green scrubs with a clear polypropylene covering, footsies and hat, and a biohazard mask with a clear plastic face shield. He stopped and looked up at her, then with two fingers on his chin tilted his head to look at Britt. “You brought John Brittain with you? Blow me over with a feather.”

  “What’s that mean, exactly?” Britt muttered.

  “Look, don’t make a big deal over it,” Jess said. “I’ve never brought anyone here before, except Regent and James.”

  “Why?”

  “I have my reasons.” Anger danced in her pupils and she closed herself off from him.

  Why hadn’t she brought anyone else here? Because she didn’t know if she could trust them with her secret?

  Tearing his attention away from her and returning it to the room below, it hardly seemed possible the bodies down there had been recently alive. Right now, they looked more like ancient mummies than corpses. But then, they’d had all of their blood removed, and in the heat on the rooftop, the conditions must have been perfect to dry them out.

  “Are those corpses going to become vampires when the moon is full?” he asked. Maybe they should have covered this in training.

  She gave him a thoughtful once over. “You have been a fan of horror fiction, haven’t you?”

  “When I was a kid I watched all the scary movies I could. Just never expected any of it to be real.”

  “In the real world, turning a victim into a vampire is a very complicated procedure. Only an experienced vampire, w
ho’s had a lot of practice, can do it.”

  “If VNA acts like a virus, why doesn’t it turn a person into a vampire when it gets into the bloodstream?”

  “VNA can only become active when the victim’s blood is ninety-nine percent drained. The vampire has to be very precise in his calculations, a little too much blood loss and the victim dies, a little less and the victim dies. Only an old master, or the occasional natural, can achieve creation without failure.”

  Britt frowned and looked down at Sampson and the corpses. “If that’s the case, where are all of these new vampires coming from?”

  Sampson raised his head and looked up at Britt. “Good question, young man. And I think I might be on the verge of solving that puzzle.”

  “Prometheus is old,” Jess said. “If he’s a master vampire, he’s had the time to master his craft.”

  Sampson moved to the next corpse and split open the chest cavity with a noisy saw, leaned over the body, and reached in with both hands. “Just like the others, the heart is completely dehydrated.” He pulled it out and held it high enough so they could see it. The heart resembled some strange shaped puffball fungus. Then he flipped on a switch and lifted his scalpel to point at a projection on the wall. “Okay, here’s what I’ve found out.” A strange looking double helix twirled before their eyes. “As you know, Jess, people who become vampires have their DNA genetically modified when they are infected with the virus.”

  “Right,” she said.

  “I’ve managed to extract some VNA from a couple of the less decomposed bodies.” He stopped working, looked up at them and pushed his face mask to the top of his head. “Prometheus is a product of biotechnology. For all intents and purposes, he’s most likely a super vampire.”

  “Meaning?” Jess frowned and planted her arms over her chest. She didn’t like the sound of this.

  “Here’s my theory,” Sampson said, pulling up a stool and propping himself on it. “I’ve done some extensive genealogical research over the years. Most vampires in the Eighteenth Century were members of the aristocracy so records were actually kept on them. It probably didn’t concern them because in those days, most people couldn’t read and records never got further than the local village parish hall or church. It appears the vampires reinvented themselves every generation by pretending they were the offspring of the previous vampire. By my records, vampires nearly died out in Europe during the late 1800s and early 1900s, when people became aware and afraid of them and started hunting them. I think the population dwindled to a handful before the First World War. In nature, animals who survive are the smartest and strongest and sometimes evolve to super status in order to maintain their species. I think this could’ve happened to vampires. The need to survive extinction made them stronger. They had to find a way to save themselves.”

  He flipped the switch again and another picture clicked onto the wall. “Imagine this. It’s World War I. Mankind didn’t have time to worry about vampires. They were too busy trying to save their own asses. Vampires most likely became less and less important until society forgot they ever believed in them. Then vampires became nightmare creatures that only existed in imaginations.” He smiled, as if he respected what they’d achieved. “I think that inadvertently, the horrors of the war helped them disappear long enough to regroup.”

  With a quick look back at the row of seats behind him, Britt lined himself up with one and dropped into it.

  Bad move. As soon as he’d done that, he realized he was at eye level with Jess’s perfect rear-end. He shifted in his chair and tried to focus on Sampson again, but his gaze kept going back to that well-rounded bottom positioned way too close to his field of vision.

  “During this time, it appears likely the smarter, tougher vampires realized they had to blend into society to protect themselves from extinction. Being nocturnal is both a blessing and a curse, so they probably set out to create a serum to enable them to go out in the daytime. Of course this is all supposition at this point, but I’ve got a gut feeling I’m right.”

  Next, a medical breakdown of minerals and blood showed up on the projection on the wall. Britt had no idea what it meant, but he knew Sampson would explain the information.

  “See the way the blood is shaped here? It looks like they’ve created a synthetic element that allows them to be almost human.” He pointed at the image on the wall with his scalpel. “If Prometheus is an example of what they can achieve, I’d say they’re evolving into vampires who might never need to be dormant during the day. I think they can probably even withstand direct sunlight. Optimum survival conditions for vampires.”

  “How long have they had this serum?” she asked.

  Sampson shrugged. “No way to tell. I’d love to get my hands on a vial of it. I didn’t get enough from the victims to be able to really breakdown its chemical compounds the way I’d like to. It was pretty much gone when I figured out there was something different in the blood. I’ll see if I can work something out with one of my outpatients. They’re on the streets. They must’ve have seen what’s going on. Surely they can fill me in on the information I’m lacking.”

  “Outpatients?” Britt frowned at Jess.

  “Sampson works with a handful of vampires who want to become human again. He’s trying to help them.

  “How many of these drug-taking vampires are out there?” Britt asked.

  “Hard to say.” Sampson answered.

  “Yeah.” Jess bit her lip and looked at Britt. “Means we’ve got to get to work. First we’ll find out if your dead partner is one of the undead, and if so, why he’s interested in you. Then maybe we’ll be able to figure out what’s going on with the serum.”

  They left the innocuous looking building that hosted more secrets than Britt cared to think about. Jess followed him in her extra dark sunglasses and velvet coat.

  “We’re going to the graveyard.” She looked at her watch. “C’mon, we’ve got to hurry. If we’re going to check your partner’s coffin, I’d like to do it before the sun sets.”

  “Because his body won’t be there after sunset if he’s a vampire?”

  The smile that spread across her face made him more aware of her physically and struck him like a punch. Her sense of humor surprised him more each time it surfaced.

  “Uhhhh … nooo.” She stretched the words out, residual humor still evident in her voice. “Because we don’t have a flashlight and you won’t be able to see in the dark. Vampires don’t really sleep in their coffins, you know. If Randy is a vampire, he’ll be set up somewhere nice, I imagine.”

  “Good to know.” This time he got behind the wheel and they drove directly to the cemetery. At least he knew where Randy was buried. Hell, he’d spent enough time there agonizing over what he’d done to his partner.

  If Randy wasn’t dead-dead, it would change everything.

  “I didn’t think anything about Randy being buried in a family crypt until now,” he told Jess when they got within a mile of the cemetery. “Now it just seems a lot creepier.”

  “Relax. Crypts aren’t places of evil. They’re just crypts. Vampires don’t hang around them. We live our lives amongst society, not with rotting corpses.”

  He heaved a sigh. “I know I’ve seen too many movies, but right now those movies are all coming back. I’m trying to figure out what’s real and what’s not.”

  “Understandable. For starters, you’ve had quite a shock finding out we’re for real. The vampires’ greatest feat was in becoming fictionalized.”

  “How many vampires are good guys, like you and James?”

  “Not many, if any at all.”

  “How’d it happen? How’d Regent keep you from being like the rest of them?”

  She shook her head but stared straight ahead. “I really don’t know. It’s amazing what he did. He should be canonized as far as I’m concerned. He’s got power over evil that no one else has been able to recreate, as far as I know.”

  “But the church doesn’t know what he d
id?”

  “No. If they did, they’d probably excommunicate him. He’s worked his whole life for God and has achieved something even the most acclaimed Bishop or clergy could never do. Can you imagine how the hierarchy would take it if they found out about his unsanctioned dabbling in evil? I’m sure that’s how they’d see it. Even exorcists have to be sanctioned and there are very few of them.”

  “I see your point. And James? How’d he happen to get help from your brother?”

  A long pause hung in the air. Jess’s face had become about as bleak as he’d seen it. “I’m the one who turned James,” she said, her hands tightly threaded and still.

  “I see.” She was the vampire who’d turned James? She’d made him a bloodsucking creature of the night? Well, hell, what did he expect? A Girl Scout selling cookies? She was the real deal.

  “That was in my darkest time. Before Regent had fully converted me. James forgave me long ago, but I can’t forgive myself. I owe him everything for taking his life. Don’t ask me why, but he stands by my side and fights with me every day. He’s special.”

  They drove down narrow roads in the cemetery until they reached the back quarter. Britt knew this place only too well. He’d spent too many agonizing hours here.

  The stone crypt sat on the crest of a knoll. “That’s Randy’s crypt.” Britt pointed. “The one with the guardian angels carved over the door.”

  Jess walked to the crypt and inspected it. “Those aren’t guardian angels, Britt. They’re fallen angels.” After examining the carvings more closely, she bent down to survey the lock on the crypt’s door.

  “How can you tell they’re not regular angels?”

  “They’ve got weapons. See, this one has a knife on a belt and this one is wearing a sword across his back.”

  “I’ll be damned. I didn’t notice that before.” He looked more closely at the intricate carvings that had probably cost a hell of a lot of dough. “If Randy’s a vampire, then his wife would have to know what he is, right?” Britt said.