“What are you going to do to me?” I finally ask.
“Well, now,” he says, his smile widening, showing me teeth. “That depends on how good a cop you turn out to be.”
The coach slows to a halt, and two knocks sound on the top. We’ve arrived at wherever he’s taking me, and my window for asking questions is over.
“Wait! I still have a lot to ask you. How big is this place? What am I supposed to do? What about magic? How can you possibly think it’s a good idea to make me a cop?”
Marsh stands up and extinguishes the light. In the darkness, right before he opens the door, he says, “Just don’t screw up. I’ll tell you what’s what, and hopefully, you’ll still be breathing in the morning. Don’t sweat it.”
Chapter 8
I step down into a high-walled courtyard. It reminds me of a castle. It’s full of noise, the stink of horses and bodies, and people shuffling around. The area is maybe as wide and deep as half a football field, but it feels cramped. The walls seem to lean in, looming over us. At the top of the walls, about twenty feet up, officers walk on patrol. They are all carrying guns similar to mine, and a couple also have massive two-handed contraptions that look like rifles attached to a heavy rope net backpack. There are several coaches like the one we used here, some parked, some driving in and out of tunnels leading further into a complex of featureless buildings and bunkers. A group of four officers climbs down out of a coach like ours, only they are holding poles attached to chains and a harness wrapped around a prisoner of some sort. Each pole is about eight feet long and is hooked to some part of this tangle of chains and straps wrapped around the guy in the center. He’s struggling, cursing something fierce, but isn’t strong enough to resist the four officers steering him into a door on the side of the building.
The building looks like a madhouse run by its patients. It is falling apart, has broken windows, and doors on the upper stories open out into thin air.
Marsh closes the door to our coach and nods to the driver. It pulls away, headed further into the complex. A few dozen officers are shuffling around, tending horses, guiding groups to doorways, running errands. Hardly anyone pays me any mind, though a few either nod to Marsh or veer out of his way.
I look back through the gateway where we entered. It reaches up to the top of the wall. Two massive doors sit open on either side of the doorway, and they look strong enough to repel an avalanche. They must be a good three feet thick. Outside the gate, a bridge at least one hundred feet long spans a fog-covered river. I can’t tell for sure, but I’m pretty sure this place has a moat. As far as I can see, the bridge is the only access to this place.
“Are we at war with somebody?” I ask.
Marsh stops, looks at me puzzled. “What do you mean?”
“I think I just saw a moat.” I struggle to put it into words, gesturing around me. “The walls. The gate. The guns. Are there some sieges or something going on?”
Marsh looks at everything I’ve indicated, then smiles broadly at me. The cigar flares as he sucks in a deep chuckle. “No, but that’s a good guess. These walls aren’t here to protect us; they’re to protect the rest of the city. They’re here to keep things IN. We can lock this place down and do our damnedest to make sure nothing gets out.”
I stare in trepidation at the large building in front of us. I can’t wait to see what’s inside.
“Follow me,” he says and marches towards the building at the center of the courtyard. We climb a short, broad flight of stone steps and approach the massive Victorian edifice. It’s four stories tall, looks like it’s a couple hundred years old and should have been torn down decades ago. There are a few barred windows and a portcullis to slam down over the front door, and as we pass through the doorway, I notice the walls are around five feet thick. I swallow nervously and stick close to Marsh. The entrance hall double-doors are wide enough to let four people walk through comfortably, but others have to squeeze through on the sides as Marsh strides confidently through the middle.
I walk across slick, yellow and black checkered tiles following in Marsh’s wake. At first, I think he’s taking me towards the immense door on the back wall—the one with reinforced bars, locks, and guards in place in front of it. But he swerves to the right, towards less intimidating areas. This main room is tall, expansive, and open. There is a reception counter to our left with a line of people waiting. The place is crowded, with dead bodies packed in tightly, glaring irritably at everyone around them, and with ghosts floating through walls and bodies alike. Even Marsh is forced to slow down as we make our way to a wide polished staircase on the other side and ascend to the second floor.
I wonder again, why do they want me here? They can’t possibly think I’d make a good cop. When I first got here, when I was captured and interrogated, they’d asked me what I did. I told them. I’m a student, studying art for now. Digital graphics. That can’t possibly be the reason they have given me a job.
Up here on the second floor, it’s less crowded. There is one massive room, desks arranged neatly in rows from one side to the other. Each desk has a small gas lamp, one chair behind and two in front, and all are manned. Ghosts float up and down the rows, and no one is freaking out about it. I mean, I want to freak out about it. There are GHOSTS.
Decrepit and decaying officers in suits and ties are sitting at their desks talking to people seated in front of them, some typing, some writing on clipboards. Some have their feet propped up, hat pulled down over their eyes, napping despite the noise. The clacking of typewriter keys is jarring, distracting over the susurration of voices whispering to each other. This is probably the loudest room I’ve heard since ending up here.
File cabinets line the walls, papers are stacked on every flat surface. Every aisle is narrow enough that two people can’t walk side-by-side. If two of them are walking towards each other, one has to duck into an adjoining aisle to let the other slide by. My skin starts to crawl, imagining having to jostle through that crowd of dead bodies shifting around me.
I don’t get it. Why is everyone working? I mean, I’ve always figured that death was the end of all that. I thought . . . I dunno. I thought I’d sit on a cloud in peaceful bliss, staring out over the earth, whatever leisurely activity it is that angels do. But instead, I’m finding out there’s more paperwork, more bureaucracy, more structure.
Marsh doesn’t pause but leads the way towards some offices located along the back wall. I just follow behind him, ignoring the many stares directed my way. Even here, people pause in their routine to take a look at me.
The offices have windows looking out into the main room, and doors that are mostly open. But there is a lot more space over here, and I let out a sigh of relief. We head to the office at the end of the row, in the corner. Most of these offices look to have several desks in them, common rooms shared by a group of officers. As I noticed downstairs, the ghosts don’t always bother with the doors; one floats out of the wall ahead of us. The offices mostly look the same, but the one he takes me to feels vastly different.
It has a closed door, and Marsh knocks and opens it without waiting for a response. He leads me in.
It is much darker here. There is a large window looking out over the bridge leading back to the city. Massive velvet curtains hang on either side of the window, behind an enormous desk made out of some heavy dark wood. It looks as much like an altar as it does a desk. The staining on it is such a dark brown it looks black. It is intricate and ornate, big enough to run laps on. And it only barely distracts me from the room’s occupant.
“Hey, Captain, I got him,” Marsh announces, clapping a hand down on my shoulder that almost crumples me to the ground. “Jake Green, this is Captain Radu.”
The man is standing with his back to me, staring out the window. As he turns to us, my brain recognizes that, while I can see a nice clear reflection of the room in the dark window, and Marsh towering over m
e and my own wild eyes, what I do not see is a reflection of the captain. I put together that this must mean that the captain is a vampire.
Then I take a good look at the captain, and I realize I already know him. I’ve met this vampire before. Panic overtakes me. I try to turn and run, but Marsh’s hand keeps me rooted in place. I struggle briefly, futilely. The captain moves forward, sweeping his arm towards a comfortable chair in front of his desk, and I lean into Marsh, as far from the captain as possible. The voice crawls into my ears in a thick accent. “Bienvenu, Mr. Green. Please have a seat.”
He’s wearing a blue pin-striped suit that’s seen better days. It is patched, faded, soiled. His shirt has stains around the collar, but the blue tie is new, a large red ruby tie-tack keeping it firmly in place.
His head looks a rotting hard-boiled egg, bald and veiny, the ears are pointed, twisted. His pupils are beady red dots in the black sea of his eyes. One eye is weeping blood, a small trickle following the track of dried blood from previous tears. His smile reveals way too many small, sharp, browning teeth. Power radiates off him like heat waves. His frame is slight, slightly hunched, but his presence dwarfs my own and is nearly overpowering.
It’s him.
I’ve seen him before. And I have to squeeze my eyes shut for a second because everything is just too much right now. Too much pain. Too much memory.
It was the captain. The creature. The thing. The thing that dragged me screaming into the darkness and Marsh’s waiting hands.
One Month Ago . . .
Marsh has been asking me the same series of questions over and over again for days.
“How did you find the doorway under the bridge?”
When he doesn’t like my answer, he leans in ominously closer. He hasn’t hurt me. Much. A punch or a slap here or there. But he always feels like he’s about to.
“How did you follow Miller?”
I can’t answer that one either. Miller is the name of the thing I saw kill the driver. Because I somehow ended up killing him, they think I had planned to do it.
“How long have you known about us?”
It doesn’t matter when I protest or declare my innocence as truthfully and earnestly as I can. And it really doesn’t help matters when Miller shows up again.
The vampire I thought I killed walks into the room where I am imprisoned. I am tied to a chair, bruised, cold, hurting all over. I thrash against my bonds as much as I can, trying to escape, but Marsh has tied the rope too tightly to allow me to wriggle out of them.
Miller smiles, exposing teeth that could make a shark envious. He seems healthy, uninjured, dead but still mobile, as if I had never jammed a shaft of wood into his chest, his heart. His eyes tell me I will not survive much longer.
“We meet again.” He grins wider, impossibly wide.
How? How is this possible? He would have said more, but then another vampire walks in.
All concerns about Marsh vanish. I wish I could scoot my chair away or hide in some way.
“Bon. Explain it to me again,” the new vampire commands. The accent is thick, difficult to understand.
I blink in confusion, wondering what he means until I realize he isn’t talking to me.
“He’s a hunter, clearly,” Miller begins. “He must have been biding his time, waiting for me. He was on me as soon as I stumbled out into the world. I ran from him, but he managed to follow me somehow.”
“Is this true?” Marsh asks me, slapping me on the head. “You some kind of vampire hunter?”
“What? No! Of course not!” I plead. “He’s lying!”
“Oh, please! If you hadn’t found me when you did, he would have destroyed me for certain.”
The vampire clicks his tongue doubtfully. “One so strong as you, Miller?”
I hear the sarcasm in his voice, but Miller seems oblivious to it. “Let’s kill him before he can do any more harm!”
The vampire appears to consider the request.
“I swear, I don’t know what’s going on here,” I plead. “I’m no hunter. Please, I just want to go home.”
They ignore me. Finally, Radu turns to Miller. “Vas-y. Go now. We will decide what to do with this one.”
Miller looks like he will argue but glances at Radu and then Marsh and appears to think better of it. He walks uncertainly out of the room.
I wait until the door closes. “He’s lying! I just stumbled across him. I wasn’t hunting him.”
The vampire looks surprised. “Lying? Bien sur. Of course he’s lying. He will be dealt with.”
“The Pit?” Marsh asks, and the vampire nods absently.
“Oui. One or two bodies we could have overlooked, but not killing that many.”
The vampire focuses on me again. “But I’m curious. Marsh, perhaps we have been asking the wrong questions.”
“What do you mean?” Marsh asks, looking sullen that his interrogation techniques are being called into question.
“Tell me, boy. There is something strange about you. Something, comment dit-on? Different. What talents do you have?” the vampire asks me, his English and French both equally confusing to me.
What does he mean?
“Talents?”
He leans closer, and the red spots of his eyes glow more fiercely.
“I can draw OK,” I say hesitantly. “I can speak some Spanish. Like that?”
“Go on,” the creature says, encouragingly.
“I don’t know! Just tell me what you want me to say!”
“What else?” He looms closer. I can’t back away.
“I can . . .” I search my mind desperately. “I can play the guitar? I can solve a Rubix Cube in a few minutes. Not a world record or anything, but pretty fast.”
“A what?” Marsh mutters.
Radu shrugs. “Yes, good. What else like that?” the captain asks, leaning back like I am finally showing some promise. I am so confused.
“I can do a good Three Card Monte. Some magic tricks.”
“Yes?”
What else? What else can I say?
“I have a good bullshit detector,” my voice heavy with equal parts sarcasm and desperation.
The vampire turns to Marsh, puzzled. “What is this he says?”
“He means he can tell when someone’s lying to him,” Marsh explains. The creature leans closer still, and the smile that blossoms on his face is terrifying.
“Yes! This is it exactly, I think.”
Marsh looks at his companion in confusion. I breathe a sigh of relief, a little of my tension escapes out of me. For the first time, I’ve given them an answer they seem to approve, though, for the life of me, I don’t understand why they like it.
The relief is short-lived. The vampire reaches out so quickly I almost don’t see it. He grabs my hair and torques my head painfully to one side. He leans in and bites painfully into my neck.
He drinks.
I thrash and kick until blackness overtakes me.
Chapter 9
My neck throbs, remembered pain lancing me where he had bitten me weeks earlier. I reflexively start to raise the gun in my right hand, but Marsh quickly knocks it back down. The captain looks at me suspiciously. Marsh is staring at me like I’m a puppy who can’t figure out the trick he wants me to do. He finally pushes me forward. I slide into the seat, gripping the arm hard with my free hand while trying to balance the gun in my lap. The last time I was in a room alone with these two was unpleasant. And obviously I hadn’t made the connection he was the captain.
“Looking good today, Captain. You do something with your hair?” Marsh says with no trace of sarcasm. I look at him like he’s crazy.
The captain waves the comment away but looks pleased, like it was a real compliment. “Thank you, Detective.” He walks back around the desk and slowly sits back down in his tall-bac
ked chair, keeping his eyes fixed on me the entire time.
“So,” he says, contemplating me, head tipping slightly to one side. He says the word slowly, the “s” sounding like a snake’s hiss. His accent is so thick I have to concentrate on his every word. “Are you prepared to help us out in our fair city, Mr. Green?”
I nod nervously.
“I actually have a question about that one, Captain,” Marsh says. “Why exactly do we need his help? Or even want it?”
The captain is silent for a moment, leaning back in his chair. Finally, he says, “Jacob Green. When you walked through the door under the bridge, what did you see?”
I groan. Not this again. “Look, I’ve answered these questions already dozens of times.”
The captain’s smile doesn’t reach his eyes. “Humor me, Mr. Green.”
Fine. I think back. “The room had some machines. An entrance to the sewers covered by a grate. Oh, yeah, and a stack of bodies piled up against a wall and a couple of vampires trying to kill me.”
The captain turns to Marsh as if I had just made his point for him. Marsh looks as confused as I am. Speaking to Marsh, the captain says, “You were given a task to observe the entrances to our city from the outside. Et alors? You examined the glamours? They are still intact, yes?”
“Yeah, Captain. They all check out fine. Mortals shouldn’t be able to see through ’em.”
The captain nods. “Oui. As you say, the glamours are intact. The doorways, that pile of bodies, even Miller should not have been visible to him. And yet here he is.”
He turns back to me, eyes not blinking, only analyzing. Images of cats and mice flicker across my mind. I’m feeling very much like prey right now. “If my suspicions are correct, he will be crucial to the murders we are investigating. We shall see. In the meantime, let us get him started in his duties. Ms. Greystone?”
Huh? Wait, he’s looking past me now. I turn around, and Greystone floats through the wall behind me, just behind my shoulder. I feel the chill against my back. That’s creepy. I didn’t hear her at all.
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