“Afternoon, sir.” Rodriguez sounded cheery. “What can I do for you?”
Preston flopped down into the wooden chair beside Rodriguez’ desk. He dropped a manila folder on his blotter. “This came across my desk this morning. I need someone I can rely on to run herd on it.”
“Someone you can rely on?” Rodriguez slid the folder in front of him and opened it. “What’s wrong with this case?”
“What isn’t wrong with it? The victim is Michael Fletcher. He was the vice principal of Marion Barry Junior High School.”
“Was?” Rodriguez turned the page to a crime scene photograph showing Fletcher dead on the sofa, sitting in a pool of blood. “Jesus.”
“His wife returned home late last night and found him like that. Bastard bled to death. The sick part is, they never found his dick.”
“Charming.”
“It gets better.” Preston leaned forward and rested his left arm on the desk, lowering his voice so as not to be overheard. “One of the cops who first arrived at the scene checked out Fletcher’s home computer to see if there were any e-mails or instant messages that might offer a clue to who did this. That’s when he found those nine one-Gigabyte thumb drives tucked away in his desk drawer.”
Rodriguez flipped to the last page of the folder where the thumb drives sat in a clear evidence bag stapled to the back flap. “Let me guess. Bondage and SM?”
“Kiddie porn. Teenage girls. All thirteen to sixteen years old.”
“Fuck.” Rodriguez aspirated the exclamation. “Any of them from Marion Barry Junior High?”
“Not sure, but probably. We won’t know until you print out photos of the girls’ faces and show them around the school.”
“You realize it’s going to take a while to do that without panicking half the parents in the school system or having it wind up on the front page of the papers?”
Which will keep you out of my way while I deal with this vampire issue, Preston thought. “I know that. That’s why I’m asking you do to this. I need someone who can not only get this done thoroughly, but can carry it out diplomatically.”
“I guess I don’t have a choice, do I?”
“Not really.”
Rodriguez sighed. “When is the autopsy being performed?”
“It’s not. Since the cause of death is obvious, the family arranged to bypass an autopsy and go directly to internment.”
“Isn’t the family interested in catching the killer?”
Preston shook his head. “Given how he died, and the fact that the killer was probably a teenage girl, my guess is the family and the school are going to brush this under the rug and claim he died of a heart attack or something like that.”
“How the hell did they pull that off?”
“Fletcher had some influential friends on the School Board and in the mayor’s office who don’t want this to become a media circus. Fuck the truth and the sodomized teenagers, just as long as we keep the school system’s precious reputation intact.” Preston reached into his pocket and withdrew a piece of paper. “Fletcher’s now at the Serra Funeral Home in Georgetown. Swing by there and pick up his personal belongings. And see if the mortician can give you any further insight into how he died. If we can’t get an autopsy, at least we might be able to get something from the preparation of the corpse.”
Rodriguez folded the scrap of paper and slid it into his pocket. “So what are my marching orders? Find out what’s going on, or make sure this whole thing stays hidden under the rug?”
“For now, find out what’s going on, but do it quietly. Once we have a better handle on what Fletcher was involved in and who his victims were, then we can reevaluate whether it’s worth expending political capital on this.”
Rodriguez sighed. “Washington politics. The best leadership money can buy.”
Preston stood. As he passed by Rodriguez, he patted him on the shoulder. “Do the best you can. And let me know if you run into any blowback.”
Exiting the squad room, Preston prided himself on another successful manipulation. Personally, he could give a fuck how the investigation turned out. That pedophilic little prick got his bit off by one of his little whores, a fitting if somewhat twisted justice. If the investigation succeeded, Preston could share in the credit. If the investigation created a scandal and ruffled political feathers, then he would sacrifice Rodriguez for exceeding his authority. In either case, Preston had succeeded in sidelining Rodriguez while he dealt with the undead.
* * *
The two men stood in the litter-strewn backyard of the row house, staring at the building’s rear façade. For the first time since he had been hunting the undead in Washington, Drake felt apprehensive. He had no idea what made him uneasy. It was a beautiful autumn day. An early afternoon sun bathed the wall in brilliant light, revealing every blemish. Pocks from where a fusillade of police bullets had gouged the wall. Charred bricks formed a fan pattern above the top floor windows, remnants of the fire started by Drake during their escape. Every window contained shattered panes of glass, with most of the boards used to block out the sun being blasted from the frames. A battered remnant of a normal life long past, with all its flaws and imperfections exposed to the light of day.
Which probably explained his unease. Usually Drake entered buildings like these in the dead of night when the dark obscured reality. He normally fought the undead in subways or underground garages, places permanently enshrouded in dark. The one time he had entered this nest, he had done so through a tunnel connected to a sewer. It seemed like he lived out his life in an alternate world to the rest of humanity, a world that lacked light or warmth. A world inhabited by the undead. He had lived in that world for so long it had become second nature to him. Going through a door in the middle of the day like a normal person offered him a new perspective and gave him a chance to compare the ordinary world with the one he lived in.
“Ready?” asked Smith.
“I guess so.”
Smith reached under his Savile Row suit jacket and withdrew a Sig Sauer P229 semi-automatic from his shoulder holster. He flipped off the safety.
Drake chuckled. “If we run into any vampires, that won’t help you.”
Smith thought about it for a second. Shrugging, he slid the semi-automatic back into his shoulder holster.
Drake pulled out one of his Glocks and handed it over. “If it makes you feel better, take this. The rounds are laced with holy water.”
“Thanks.” Smith pushed aside the front flap of his suit jacket and tucked the Glock between his pants and the small of his back. He patted Drake on the shoulder. “Come on.”
The two crossed the backyard and climbed the few steps to the rear door. Drake yanked away the strands of yellow barricade tape stapled to the jamb and tried the knob. Locked.
“You have any special tools for unlocking doors?”
“Yup.” Raising his foot, Smith slammed his heel against the door just above the knob. With a crack of splintering wood, the door flew open until it banged against the wall. It shuddered, closed slightly, then stopped. Smith grinned. “The low-tech methods are still the best.”
“Works for me.”
The two men switched on their flashlights. Drake led the way inside.
Despite the boards that had covered the kitchen windows having been mostly been blown out, darkness still shrouded most of the room. Enough light remained for the two men to see a squad of rats abandon their foraging and dash for the safety of the inner walls, and of the cockroaches swarming over the appliances and through the cabinets. The musty smell of accumulated mold mixed with the sickeningly sweet stench of decayed meat. Smith coughed several times and gagged, then pressed his left wrist under his nose to block the smell.
“Welcome to my world,” said Drake.
“You can have it.”
Drake led the way to the door leading to the basement and shined his light inside. He barely recognized it. The decayed bodies had been removed, the only evidence of their ex
istence being the chalk outlines the police had drawn around each victim. The number of outlines and their grotesquely-twisted forms attested to the horrors that took place down there. The city had filled in the entrance tunnel leading to the sewer, the giant cement plug reminding Drake of a tombstone sitting atop a mass grave.
The two men stepped out of the kitchen into the foyer. Here enough light poured through the uncovered windows that flashlights were no longer necessary. In front of the kitchen door, a pile of vampire ash had been strewn about by the police and firemen, with several footprints ground into the hardwood floor.
“This is what’s left of the snuffy Alison used as shield to protect us from the gunfire.”
“She’s resourceful.”
Drake took Smith on a room-by-room tour of the row house, pointing out where he and Alison had slain each vampire. Seeing the chalk outlines where police had found blood-drained bodies brought home to both men the true revulsion of what went on in this nest and the viciousness of the enemy they faced. After checking out the room on the third floor where the main battle had taken place, they walked down the hall and stopped a few yards short of the master bedroom. Scorched wood and blistered paint surrounded the doorway and sprawled along the ceiling.
“This is the room the snuffies came out of. Alison and I never got a chance to check it out. I tossed two bottles of Heaven’s Fire in here, just in case.”
Carefully walking up to the door in case the fire had damaged the floorboards, the two men peered inside. Jim’s home-made napalm had gutted the room. The inner walls and most of the floorboards were burned away, exposing the supporting beams that were charred black by the flames. The remains of a bed and the scalded wire frame from a mattress dominated the floor. Few ashes remained, most of them having been washed away by the concentrated streams of water used to put out the fire.
Smith switched on his flashlight and shone it around the remains, carefully studying the room. “You did a good job of torching this room. If the master was in here, she wouldn’t have survived.”
“The key word is ‘if’. There’s no way to confirm it.”
“Yeah.” Smith shone the flashlight around the room one final time, trying to convince himself they had eliminated the master. Common sense prevailed. “So we go on the assumption that she’s still alive?”
“We have no other choice.”
“Damn.” Smith switched off the flashlight and turned to Drake. “What now?”
“We continue our nightly hunts. If we’re lucky, we’ll find the new nest and destroy it before it gets too big.”
* * *
Reese closed the back cover of a Spanish-language edition of Dante’s Inferno. He shut his eyes, trying to alleviate the strain from seven hours of non-stop reading. It did not work. Even more frustrating, he was only halfway through his search.
After not finding any memoirs for Antonio Ferrar post-dated 21 September 1485, he decided to thumb through each of the inquisitor’s books, page by page, hoping to find a notation on the endplates or in the margins of a page that might provide a clue to what happened after his last diary entry. It sounded simple enough. After all, Ferrar’s personal library contained less than thirty books. But simplicity quickly turned to monotony when he began the arduous task of thumbing through each volume. Several hours and hundreds of brittle pages later, all Reese had come across were a few inscriptions in a couple of the books and personal notes from superiors who had given these books as gifts. Nothing useful. And there were another dozen books in the archives he still needed to look at. Not a promising prospect.
Reese placed the book he had just finished perusing back into its special basswood case, closed the lid, and returned it to its climate-controlled bookcase. He removed the next basswood case and brought it back to his work station, where he opened the lid and removed from its setting an oversized presentation Bible. It measured thirteen-by-seventeen inches in diameter, and bore a title inlaid in gold on the leather cover. According to an inscription on the inside cover, the Bible had been a gift from Pedro Arbues, the canon of Saragossa Cathedral, to “his most loyal and faithful servant in Christ.” Despite being more than five hundred years old, the Bible was in near pristine condition, obviously having been used infrequently. Reese confirmed that assessment when he opened the Bible to the pages set off by the red linen bookmark. The binder crackled when he opened it, not from age but from lack of use. The marked section was from Isaiah. Reese scanned the pages, his eyes eventually falling on a single passage surrounded by two hand-drawn brackets. “I form the light and create darkness: I make peace and create evil: I the Lord do all these things.”
Not necessarily the Holy Grail, but it was the best lead he had all day. Hell, it was the only lead he had all day.
Wanting to re-read the inscription, Reese closed the Bible and opened just the front cover. As he leaned closer to examine the handwriting, he noticed an inch-long tear in the material where the front cover met the binder. The tear ran the length of the Bible and had been carefully resealed with glue, done so meticulously that a casual glance would not reveal the damage. Damage may not have been the appropriate word, for on closer examination Reese noticed that the tear seemed clean, looking more like someone had purposefully sliced the material. The glue had long since lost its adhesiveness, which allowed the cover to separate from the binder. Reese lifted the Bible so the lamplight shone directly on it, trying to see if there was anything between the cover and the binder. He saw the edges of what looked like several lose pages.
Reese laid the Bible back on the table, trying to contain his excitement. Not looking up or moving his head, he scanned the research room with his eyes. None of the other researchers sat at his table, and the three at the other tables all had their backs to him. The archivist with the auburn hair sat at her station in the main hall, out of their line of sight. Placing his right hand on the pages of the Bible to hold it in place, Reese slowly pushed down on the front cover. The glue gave way, slowly increasing the tear along the length. He placed his thumb under the front cover just as it separated. Lowering the cover onto the table, he got a look at the binder. Several sheets of five-by-seven inch paper were tucked into a hand-made pocket created between the cover’s hard interior support and its leather covering. Taking a last surreptitious look to make sure no one was watching, he slid out the pages and closed the cover.
Reese recognized the handwriting as belonging to Antonio Ferrar. He grew really excited when he noticed the date in the upper right corner of the first page. 27 September 1485. Six days after the final entry in his archived memoirs.
Reese practically trembled with anticipation as he read the text, mentally translating from the original Latin.
27 September 1485
I am committing this account to a separate journal out of fear. Fear that I am slowly losing my sanity. Or worse, fear that my sanity remains intact, and that the evil I confront actually exists.
I speak, of course, about Emilio Carius, the unholy one. Even writing his name fills me with dread, for it is as if I cited the infernal name of Lucifer himself. Any humanity that once shone in the darkness of his being—if, in fact, such humanity ever existed—has long since been extinguished. I have been charged by the Holy Father to save men’s souls. Alas, this one has no soul to save.
Let me return to the beginning to properly record the nightmarish events that have unfolded.
Four nights ago, Emilio Carius was brought to Aljaferia, along with five other men and a woman, charged with the murder of the beloved Canon of Saragossa Cathedral, Pedro Arbues. The others are insignificant. They already have admitted to their crimes, have been absolved of their sins, and received just punishment. May God have mercy on their souls.
Emilio Carius is different.
I knew soon after they brought him to Aljaferia that evil consumed this man. It was not the vile blasphemies that emanated from his tongue in a steady stream of verbal defilements against God the Father and Our Lord an
d Savior Jesus Christ. Nor was it the fact that it required six of our strongest men to subdue and bring him into custody, or that a series of chains were required to be draped across and wrapped around his body to hold him in place. Even the accusations against him—that he only left his residence at night during the witching hours, that he was frequently witnessed cavorting with immoral women or tempting young children, none of whom were ever seen again—failed to accurately define his inner darkness. No, what bespoke of his evil was his imperviousness to the physical tribulations he endured, tribulations designed to bring about a cleansing of the soul and the redemption from sin.
For three days we attempted to convince him to confess his sins and renounce Satan, all to no avail. Though I may be condemned to eternal damnation for daring to commit this to paper, it seems as if God’s merciful presence had abandoned Aljaferia.
On the first day, we tried the strappado. Tying his hands behind his back and the weights around his ankles was difficult due to his inhuman strength. God forgive me, I doubt we would have been able to succeed if he had not wanted us to subject him to tribulation to taunt our faith in the Almighty. No man or woman has been able to endure the strappado for long. Yet when we hoisted his bound wrists onto the pulley and lifted him off the ground, Emilio Carius laughed and blasphemed the Lord God and the Holy Catholic Church. We raised and dropped him a dozen times, and nary once did he even groan in discomfort. On the thirteenth drop—the unholy number—the weights around his ankles proved too great a burden for his body to bear, breaking his arms. I know as sure as I know there is a God Almighty that Carius’ arms broke, for the sound of their snapping was audible to all present, and his inability to use them afterwards was evident. I emphasize this point to make clear the unholy nature of what happened next, for after hoisting Carius down and returning him to his cell, next morning his arms were healed completely as if no injury occurred. A demonic sign if ever I have witnessed one.
The Vampire Hunters (Book 2): Vampyrnomicon Page 18