City Of The Damned: Expanded Edition

by Stephen Knight

  With a sigh, Acheson relaxed. “I’ll brief Fiedler. If you can interview Sharon and see if you can get anything regarding Chiho’s whereabouts or the location of the vamps, that would be great.”

  Ellenshaw nodded. “Of course.”

  He stepped aside, and Acheson stalked past, heading toward his office. Ellenshaw watched him for a moment, then looked back at Julia. She stared at him for several seconds before shrugging her shoulders.

  “He’ll come through, Robert. He won’t give up.”

  Unlike you, was the unspoken rebuke. Ellenshaw knew it was true. He had given up in Arizona, when Helena was taken and the rest of the TOC team had been killed. The implied reproach reminded him that, despite his past service, he was an outsider now.

  “I know he will,” Ellenshaw agreed quietly. He spun on one heel and headed for the quarantine area.

  ***

  After the night’s feedings, Osric escorted Helena to her sleeping place. Though dawn was but half an hour away he was still full of energy and vigor. By counterpoint, the rest of the vampires—even the masters—were growing weary, running down. And most of the newlings had already collapsed. Osric wasn’t physically present to know all of this, nor did he need to be. He knew the whereabouts of each member of his Family as if he were standing right next to them, sensed their condition as keenly as if it were his own. As he lowered Helena into her resting place, he felt the force that kept her animate during darkness ebb from her like a waning tide. If he so desired, Osric could have parted with a miniscule amount of his power to keep her awake and alert for hours, even after the vile Sun had risen. But he allowed her to return to the dead and sealed the casket lid over her, entombing her in the darkness she needed as much as she once did oxygen.

  Afterward, he found himself on the mansion’s balcony. The mountain air was still cold, and it stirred through the canyons, as if it too feared the coming dawn that was faintly visible to the east. Far below, the great city of Los Angeles lay spread out before him, and Osric regarded it like a raptor scanning the landscape for its quarry, his eyes sharp and hungry. Even though he had fed twice tonight—first on the dregs that trickled from the veins of the old man Schwimmer and then on a fifteen-year-old girl one of his minions had captured for him—a cold hunger resonated through his being. The power the Ancient One had granted him during the night’s ceremony came with an appetite that could no longer be satisfied by mere blood alone. In a way even his fellow vampires could not sense, Osric had bound himself to the Ancient One. Although he ruled over the vampire Family, he was now a slave to the Lord of All Shadows and those who belonged to His clan. Osric had resigned himself to being a mere agent, an instrument of greater evil.

  Or pure beauty, he thought to himself. When one basks in the power of the Ancients, even the darkest blackness holds rewards so lovely that few can comprehend them.

  Stahl stepped out of the mansion and into what was left of the night. Osric smiled at his lieutenant. Stahl cast his gaze toward the purple smear on the horizon, and it amused Osric to see a vampire as mighty as this one still feared the rising sun.

  “Worry no longer, Stahl. The humans get one last sunrise before their days come to an end. It’s the least we can do, eh? Shoulder the burden of one parting inconvenience before our time arrives forever?”

  Stahl looked at Osric with eyes that hadn’t seen much emotion even when they were human. “I have the night’s report, my master.”

  Stahl advised him in his usual terse way that all the hunters had returned safely, either to the mansion or to the huge warehouse full of coffins in El Segundo. The Family promised to grow by another 140 members within the next few days. Another twenty-six newlings had been born, and all had been collected without incident. The Family now stood at almost 200 strong, a veritable army and likely the largest clan outside the ancestral strongholds of Europe. It was all music to Osric’s ears. Though the Family could have been ten times larger had he wished it, for the moment, stealth was still more important than size. But even a being as old as Osric still found patience the hardest of virtues to cultivate. Especially now, when all he had worked for was so near…

  Osric dismissed Stahl, who hurriedly retreated into the mansion and made for the safety of his casket. Osric lingered, inhaling the scents as the air changed with the wakening of humanity. He could sense the teeming millions below, climbing toward wakefulness as the sun mounted the eastern horizon, infusing the sky there with pastels of purples and reds. But in the west, out over the ocean, darkness held fast. In fact, it swept toward the shoreline at hurricane speeds.

  “Master?”

  Tremaine stood at the threshold of the balcony door, looking out at Osric with fatigued, haunted eyes. Osric was disappointed. He’d hoped that Tremaine was made of stronger stuff, but the ritual he had bore witness to had affected him deeply. He hadn’t a soul of blackness after all, only the appetites of a common, sybaritic deviant. Osric felt in some small way betrayed, though all of the signs had been there. It had been Osric’s failing to look.

  “Tremaine. You should rest,” the tall vampire said.

  “I will, Master. But the dawn—”

  “The coming of day no longer concerns me.”

  Tremaine glanced at the eastern horizon, still worried. “Nevertheless… should you chance it now? In another day or two, you’ll have everything you’ve planned for, yes?”

  Osric turned and regarded the advent of dawn. In minutes, the Sun would crest the hills to the east, bringing bright sunshine to the city, the mountains, the valleys, the great sea to the west. Its probing rays would force shadow to cede its reign. Despite everything that had transpired in the past several hours, a small fear of the Sun still lingered in his mind. No matter how powerful he grew, no matter how mighty he became with the assistance of the Great Old Ones, direct sunlight could still kill him. His oldest foe would continue to hunt for him, from rise to set, and his powers as a daywalker protected him only while blanketed in shadow.

  “You’re to take care of the woman Rodrigo brought to us tonight. She’s dangerous, so do not take your eyes off her for one instant.”

  Tremaine bowed his head. “As you wish, my Master.”

  Osric pushed past him and into the house. Fatigue tugged at the edges of his consciousness now, like a pack of wolves skulking about the fringes of a camp fire. But as he opened the cellar door, he turned back to Tremaine. He had followed his master, as was his duty.

  “Tremaine, this…companion of yours. Does…” He paused, trying to determine the best pronoun for one at such gender crossroads as Tremaine’s lover. “…She know what goes on here?”

  Tremaine shook his head. “My Master, she knows nothing of you or the rest of the Family.” He blinked quickly, and a slight sheen of sweat broke out across his brow. Osric smiled.

  “You didn’t think I knew of her?” he asked.

  “I…” Tremaine struggled with the words for a moment. “I hadn’t thought you cared to know how I spent the daylight hours, my Master.”

  Osric laughed and placed a cold hand on Tremaine’s shoulder. “Bring her to us tonight, Tremaine. The city of Los Angeles will meet its end. Best she watches it by your side, yes?”

  “Thank you, my Master!”

  Osric acknowledged Tremaine’s appreciation with a curt nod. He disappeared into the cellar, and Tremaine closed the door just as the first bright rays of sunshine crested the mountaintops and fell across the mansion.

  14

  “I understand you’ve had a very interesting night, Mark.” Erskine Fiedler was nothing if not a master of understatement. “I’ve been in contact with liaisons in various other agencies. You’ve caused quite a stir out there. I’m hoping you can take the time to brief me on it.” There was little warmth in Fiedler’s voice. Acheson glanced at the clock and saw it was after six in the morning, which made it nine o’clock in Washington.

  Acheson leaned back in his office chair and gazed at the drop-down ceiling overhead. The
fluorescent lights hummed in the quiet. He cradled the phone against his shoulder and rubbed his temples with both hands.

  “Yes, sir.” Acheson gave Fiedler the Cliff’s Notes version of all that had transpired in the past several hours, beginning with the raid and ending with the team’s release by the Los Angeles Police Department. He omitted nothing while keeping the report as concise as possible. It was what they in the military called a “pulse” and conveyed only the bare essentials, devoid of embellishment.

  “Is the team still mission capable, Mark?”

  “Yes. If we can find the lair, we can take it out. But we can’t get into a decisive engagement—we need to isolate them and wipe them out all at once.”

  “They’re inside a heavily populated urban environment. The collateral damage—”

  “Director, this is more than just a vampire clan taking refuge in a large city. They’re after more than just food now.”

  “Agreed. But we haven’t been successful at penetrating Osric’s decision cycle. We don’t even know where his damned Family is.”

  “We’re trying, director.”

  Fiedler was silent for a moment, then said, “This is interesting.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you have a television or a computer near you?”

  Acheson reached for the keyboard on his desktop and logged into his workstation. “I’m online right now.”

  “Go to CNN. There’s something of interest occurring out in the Pacific.”

  “The Pacific?” Acheson opened a web browser and typed in the address for CNN’s web page. A moment later, the screen filled with the site’s leading story: MASSIVE HURRICANE HEADING FOR SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA. The story’s lead-in read, City of Los Angeles most probable target.

  “What the hell is this?”

  “The Navy has a carrier group in the vicinity,” Fiedler said. “I’ve asked our DoD liaison to get me the details on that. I need to put you on hold for a moment.” The phone went silent, and Acheson read the article carefully while waiting for Fiedler to return. At just after midnight Pacific Time, the USGS had detected a small earthquake registering 3.3 on the Richter scale in the Pacific, several hundred miles from the California coastline. The temblor had taken place at least a mile beneath the sea bed itself. An hour later, the storm formed in the same vicinity. The article explained that most hurricanes came to life when there was a marked difference between the temperature of the air that formed them and the temperature of the ocean that fed them. Could an earthquake be tied in to that? And might whatever Osric be playing at be a factor as well?

  Vampires and weather control? That’s a new one…

  “Back with you, Mark. Check your e-mail, I’ve just sent you something you might find interesting.”

  Acheson logged into his e-mail and double-clicked on the attachment Fiedler had sent. He leaned forward and studied the image that filled his screen. The black-and-white picture was grainy, apparently taken through a night vision imaging system. He could make out rough seas, and what looked like the vacant deck of an aircraft carrier extending into the gloom. White-topped waves surrounded the vessel. On the horizon, something dark and serpentine wound its way skyward until it disappeared into a mass of turbulent clouds. At the bottom of the photo, GPS location data and the legend USS Ronald Reagan had been stamped into the photo, along with the date and time. The picture had been taken only an hour ago.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “I’m told it’s a water spout,” Fiedler said. “And a large one, almost 200 feet across at its base. There is apparently an undersea volcano erupting, and it’s generating the water spout. It’s pumping thousands of gallons of warm seawater into the cloud cover, and that’s created the storm.”

  A surge of anxiety left a pit in Acheson’s stomach. There was no rational connection between what was happening in Los Angeles and the formation of the hurricane in the Pacific, but he found it impossible to ignore.

  “I spoke with Robert before I called,” Acheson said. “We discussed the kidnapped infants I told you about. He seems to feel they were probably taken for use in some type of ritual.”

  “Sacrifices?”

  “We don’t know. But Ellenshaw seems to think they would be used in some sort of invocation, or evocation. This is outside my usual scope, but if he’s right, then it might have something to do with what we’re seeing here.”

  Fiedler said nothing for a long time.

  “Director?” Acheson prompted.

  “The Navy reports that illumination levels have fallen dramatically due to the cloud cover,” Fiedler said. “No one has provided any specifics, but if it’s true, then the vamps could use this to their advantage. To effectively turn day into night.”

  The pit in Acheson’s stomach yawned into a chasm. “Holy shit.”

  “Yes. Holy shit indeed.”

  ***

  “I can’t have you disturbing her now. She’s had a terrible setback, and we need to get it under control.” Andrew Kerr had adopted an almost petulant tone that Ellenshaw might have found humorous under different circumstances. At this moment however, he found it difficult to contain his anger at the portly researcher’s sudden obstreperousness.

  “Sharon is going to Turn.” Ellenshaw held up Sharon’s medical charts. “Here’s the proof. You’ve done your best, but she’s beyond our help.”

  “Giving up is not an option!” Kerr’s face flushed crimson.

  “But giving her a quick and merciful death before she can become one of them most certainly is.”

  “You have got to be kidding me.” Kerr looked at Ellenshaw with angry eyes. “You’re telling me it’s time to give up?”

  “What I’m telling you is that we have very little time left to get whatever information she can give us on Osric. Once she Turns, she’s of no value to us. She is a strategic asset that we must make use of.”

  Kerr glared at Ellenshaw for several seconds, then turned and looked through the tank’s thick Plexiglas wall. Sharon lay on a hospital bed, actively monitored by machines and personnel alike.

  “I can’t believe it’s come to this,” Kerr said softly.

  “I don’t like it either,” Ellenshaw said. “But we have to play the hand we’re dealt.”

  “I’m not upset that I’m losing,” Kerr said. “I’m upset because I like Sharon. We were never close, but I do like her.”

  Ellenshaw smiled. While Andrew Kerr was a brilliant scientist, he was not renowned for his warmth. Ellenshaw knew such an admission was hard for him. He put a hand on Kerr’s arm. Kerr looked back at him with eyes that brimmed with unspoken emotion.

  “I have to do this,” Ellenshaw told him. “It’s either me or Acheson, and I think it’s best if it’s me.”

  Kerr nodded. With a heavy sigh, he reached for the keypad beside the airlock door. He punched in the access code, and the door cycled open.

  “Will I need a gown or mask?” Ellenshaw asked.

  Kerr shook his head. “You can’t contract the virus from casual contact.”

  “Actually, I was asking on account of Sharon.”

  “Catching a cold is the least of her worries now.”

  Ellenshaw nodded and stepped through the airlock. Kerr closed it behind him, and electric motors whirred as locks moved into place. Ellenshaw’s ears popped as the air pressure inside the airlock increased minutely, and then the inner airlock door clicked open. Ellenshaw pushed through it, and it closed automatically behind him. On the other side, the nurse tending to Sharon watched him from behind her surgical mask.

  “Is she sedated?” Ellenshaw asked.

  “Yes. Less than half a milligram of Midazolam, just enough to keep her calm. But she’s not very lucid.”

  “Understood. Thanks.”

  The nurse slipped out. Ellenshaw stood over Sharon’s bedside and looked down at her. Her eyes moved restlessly behind closed lids, and her hands twitched slightly. Her skin was pale. He placed his palm on her forehead. Her skin
was cool and clammy. Whether it was from the sedative or the virus, he couldn’t tell.

  Sharon’s eyes opened slowly. Ellenshaw removed his hand and smiled as warmly as he could. She stared up at him for a moment, then swallowed with great effort.

  “Professor.” Her voice was barely more than a whisper.

  “Yes. Are you comfortable?”

  “Groggy,” Sharon said.

  “You’ve been given a light sedative.”

  “Nothing light about this.” Her words came haltingly, as if she had to concentrate on them. Sharon seemed to drift off. Ellenshaw was about to rouse her when her eyes snapped open. She turned her head toward him and made an effort to focus on him.

  “Why are you here?” she asked.

  Ellenshaw pulled a stool close and perched on it. He took one of her hands in his own. Her return grip was surprisingly strong.

  Ellenshaw said, “You feel the vampires, right? Can you feel them during the day?”

  Sharon shook her head. “No. They disappear. Sleep.”

  “Even Osric?”

  Sharon shook her head again. “Always sense him.”

  “Even during the day?”

  “Uh-huh. Not as strong. But still there.”

  “And he can sense you as well?”

  “Think so.”

  “Can you tell us where they are?”

  Sharon shook her head.

  Ellenshaw frowned with disappointment, even though he had known it wouldn’t be that easy. He patted Sharon’s hand.

  “All right,” he said. “Maybe you can tell us more about Osric himself. He’s here in the Los Angeles area, yes?”

  Sharon nodded. “Of course.”

  “How close to us is he?”

  “Not far. Miles. Ten. Twenty. When at the hospital… seemed closer.”

  Ellenshaw leaned closer. “What is he like, Sharon?”

  Sharon was silent for a long moment. She stared up at the ceiling, and Ellenshaw thought she had faded out. But she focused her gaze on him again.