by Aimée Thurlo
“So you’ve always put yourself in harm’s way, like live bait, knowing they can’t help but come looking for you. You must have a major death wish. What exactly do they want, besides to kill you? Will your blood make them immortal, healing their injuries and diseases? Would it do the same for me?”
“I don’t know for sure, but I doubt it. I’m only half vampire, ‘a walker of the night,’ as the medicine men say.”
“There goes my fountain of youth. Guess I’ll still need moisturizers.” She smiled wearily, then walked across the room to the hall. He followed.
“We don’t need to keep watch, at least not tonight. Take the bedroom at the end of the hall. I’ll use the one across from the main bathroom. I leased this place basically furnished, and there are plenty of nonperishable supplies.” Lee handed her the flashlight.
“Do you have a laptop? I’d like to do some research?”
He nodded. “You’re going to look up vampires and check up on the other stuff I’ve told you?”
“I’m a federal cop. We do a lot of our legwork from our offices.”
He walked back into the living room, unlocked a desk drawer, and returned with a small laptop and power supply. “Here you go.”
“Tomorrow morning we’re going to have to discuss what to do about Muller,” Diane said, taking the laptop from him.
“I know. Just try to relax in the meantime, and make sure your head is on straight after all you’ve learned today. Biding your time until the opportunity to strike is right is a good battle strategy. Trust me on that.”
“I know. Patience is always a good investigative tool. And I’ve got lots.”
Lee watched Diane go. It felt strange having a woman in the same house as him—one who knew his darkest secrets, even if she probably really didn’t believe some of them, not yet. He’d made himself vulnerable by telling her as much as he had, though he’d had little choice after all she’d already encountered. His only hope now was that his instincts about her were on target and she wouldn’t betray him.
After living alone for so many years, always in danger from skinwalkers or the discovery of his vampire powers, Lee had become a light sleeper, and with his enhanced hearing, it wasn’t a difficult habit to acquire. Sometime before sunrise he heard Diane walk into the living room, and unlock one of the dead bolts on the outside door.
He didn’t move, though he knew he could stop her. The choice was really hers, and he couldn’t risk having an ally who’d change sides at the worst possible moment. He wasn’t so much worried about her telling his story—she’d be laughed out of the Bureau—but she could get in his way.
After about five minutes, she locked it again and went back to her room. Lee rolled over and closed his eyes, knowing he was safe for a while. Whatever crisis she’d had had passed, at least for the moment.
Vampires, even half vampires, didn’t need alarm clocks to know it was morning. Lee woke up feeling moody, having dreamed for the first time in years about Annie. He didn’t remember much about the dream, only that Annie had been there with him, and they’d been on the road in his old pickup with the camper shell. They’d gone on a lot of trips during their time together, just the two of them. It was those fond memories that had helped block out her loss.
Not one to dwell in his rather substantial past, Lee opened his eyes, saw where he was, and got out of bed. He slipped on a pair of jeans from the closet and walked down the hall past his guest’s closed door, and headed into the kitchen. He could hear water running in the shower.
He had a pot of coffee brewing by the time Diane came into the kitchen. She had on a pair of his jeans, which were slightly baggy on her, and an Aggies sweatshirt. It was a common sight in Las Cruces. Diane looked very natural in the casual clothes he’d kept here for emergencies, like the woman of the house on a lazy Saturday morning—except for the nine-millimeter handgun in a pancake holster on her belt, of course.
“Good morning, Lee. Hope you don’t mind me tracking down some clothes. Your jeans are a bit large, but I like them clunky.”
Diane walked over to the sink and found her cup in the drain rack. “Coffee nice and strong? I can use it this morning.” She stared at his chest for a moment, then she must have realized what she was doing and looked away.
“What’s mine is yours when it comes to clothes. Sorry about the sizes though, I don’t have very many women guests.” Lee shrugged, knowing she had to realize that he’d never brought anyone here. “I’m going to grab a shower now. There aren’t any towels or soap in the hall bathroom.”
“I noticed you have lots of sunblock beside the sink in the bathroom I used. Put that on first thing every day, I bet.” Diane sounded almost used to the idea of him being a night walker.
“Be prepared, like the Boy Scouts say.” He walked down the hall to the master bedroom and stepped inside, closing the door. The bed was already made, and her clothes were neatly folded on the floor beside the dresser. The room smelled like a woman, and it was a scent he stopped for a moment to enjoy. The trace smell of makeup, a hint of perfume or hand lotion, it all brought back pleasant memories of the one brief time he’d been truly happy with his cursed life.
Realizing that kind of pleasure wasn’t something he should start getting used to again, Lee went into the bathroom and stripped off his jeans. A long shower was what he needed, preferably cold.
Later, they worked together to fix breakfast. There weren’t any eggs or fresh milk, but they had pancakes from a mix that only needed powdered milk and vegetable oil to prepare, and he paired it with canned ham sliced and warmed in the skillet. He set out a jug of blood from the refrigerator too, and she looked at it curiously for a moment before he explained that no, it wasn’t tomato juice, and she didn’t have to drink any to be polite.
Diane didn’t say much during breakfast, though Lee knew she had a lot on her mind from her thoughtful expressions and lack of attention to his lousy jokes.
Finally, as they were loading the dishwasher—Lee joked he wouldn’t have a safe house without one—Diane finally brought up what was on her mind.
“I was raised in Albuquerque’s North Valley, the old Alameda neighborhood, and I grew up with all the spooky old children’s stories there about La Llorona, the spirit of the mother looking for her drowned child along the ditch banks, and the stories of the Anglo bogeyman as well. The stories all promised that if you were a good kid and listened to your parents, you were safe.
“Then those stories gave way to stories of Frankenstein, the wolfman, and Dracula—old Hollywood. Good always won out over evil, and the devils servants went to hell, where they belonged. Even in the films about that guy, Jason, Michael, or whoever it was with the ski mask and butcher knife, good won at the end, though evil would be back in the sequel.
“But no matter what was in vogue, I always knew a real threat from one that was made up. I’d jump and scream at all the right times at the movies, but I was never really afraid. A rational mind protects you to a large extent. I became a cop because the line between right and wrong was clear and everything was predicated on hard facts. Then in the FBI, I learned what a really scary guy is—and what motivates him. Yet even within insanity there was always logic, convoluted as it might be, and it all fit within the laws of nature. But now. . . .”
“Still the skeptic?”
“What did you expect? Even when I was a little kid and we went to amusement parks, I always knew there was a human inside that mouse costume. And the movies; makeup and camera tricks.”
“We’re real. I’m real, and creatures like me have nothing to do with either magic or special effects. We’re a part of nature, just like rabid dogs and serial killers. If you haven’t accepted that skinwalkers and vampires really exist, what made you change your mind and stay this morning?”
“You heard that but didn’t try to stop me? Why?” Diane was obviously surprised.
“Either I had no real choice after what you’ve already encountered, or I saw somethi
ng about you that made me want to take a chance and finally trust someone again. Last night won’t be your only test of faith. Things are just going to get tougher now, and stranger than anything you’ve seen before.”
Diane nodded. “I was afraid you’d say that. If it hadn’t been for the evidence I’d seen and felt for myself, I’d have been long gone. But now we have to deal with the topic of that German, Major Muller, and the possibility that he’s really Hans Gruber. We need to decide what to do next. What if he’s not the man—vampire—you’re after? And what do we do about the skinwalker or skinwalkers still running around out there looking for you, and possibly me as well? I know you want Muller, and I understand why, but I want the creature who killed Burt Thomas.” Diana’s voice had gone from calm and businesslike to deadly cold by the time she finished speaking.
Lee had no doubt that she’d learned the details of her partner’s death last night via the laptop. In spite of having her world turned upside down, this young Hispanic woman had the courage and training to face up to things as they stood now. She might have made a good partner for someone like him in the real world. Hell, she might prove to be an asset in the unreal world as well.
“Conventional justice and the law part company with our investigations now,” Lee pointed out. “Are you ready for that? You’ve seen that skinwalkers are vicious predators. They will kill even if placed in prison, until they are themselves killed. There’s no way we can ever take them to court, for obvious reasons. And Muller? He could never be brought in for the crimes he committed in I945, and even if jailed, he could probably get out quite easily.”
“And kill a handful of those trying to stop him, if he’s even stronger and faster than you.”
She obviously was following his logic, so he continued. “We both know where we stand, but before we decide who to go after first, the skinwalker pack or the vampire, we need to pool what information we have.”
He brought out a map of the Alamogordo area. “I know where Muller lives, some of his routine off base, and the names of his associates—mainly his crewman and that crewman’s wife. He’s easily our most dangerous prey, and will be very hard to kill. For all I know, he’s been around for hundreds of years, and a vampire with that kind of experience can have many skills. If he even suspects we’re on his trail . . .”
“He’ll come looking for us, or slip away again. So what you need to know from me is what contact, if any, the Bureau or any local authorities have had with him that might have tipped him off.” Diane reached into her purse and pulled out a small notebook, flipping through it to find her working notes on that aspect of his case.
“Basically, my boss, Raymond Lewis, the Special Agent in Charge in Albuquerque, told me to interview you and find out why you were using FBI sources to check out a German Air Force pilot training in New Mexico. If there was something the Bureau needed to know or act upon, I was to follow up on it. If it turned out you were the problem, I was to keep an eye on you in order to keep you from embarrassing the country. He said it could be a real career maker for me.” She paused, then added, “That’s what I get for being ambitious.”
Lee nodded, having pretty much guessed as much. “So following up on the shooting of Johnny Tanner was just an excuse to interview me without tipping your hand right away.”
“Exactly, But now I know that particular incident hasn’t been settled either. Agent Thomas had a wife and three children.” Her eyes narrowed. “Whatever we do about Muller, I’m still going to get the bastard who mutilated my partner.”
“You’ll have my help on that. But getting back to the first matter; what, if anything, do the Germans or any other personnel, including the U.S. military at Holloman, know about the Bureau’s activities and my inquiries concerning Muller? More importantly, what has Muller been told?”
Lee walked over to the window, and looked outside without disturbing the fall of the curtain. If he was paranoid, at least he had plenty of good reasons for it.
“The Bureau, to my knowledge, hasn’t communicated any of this to base officials or the German government, and especially not to Muller, his crewman, or his commanding officer. You gave the excuse of not revealing your suspicions on drug dealing or espionage because you had no real evidence, just odd circumstances. The Bureau is even more paranoid when it comes to giving out information, especially when it could all blow up in our faces politically. I could destroy my career just by telling you this, you know.” Diane looked through the rest of her notes before looking up again. “Trust works both ways now.”
“Well, if we both make it through this alive, and stop Muller, I’ll find the nuclear material for you, and you can present it to the authorities,” he said. He was looking forward to the day when he could finally turn that responsibility over to others. “Hopefully, you can come out of this smelling like a rose. I don’t want to draw any more attention to myself than I already have. Just keeping my job is going to be tricky now.”
He stopped and remembered something Diane had said just before the skin walker-wolves had attacked.
“Wait a moment. You mentioned yesterday that you had done a background check on me. That’s when you found the connection between my past and present. Who else knows about that? If that info is available to other Bureau agents, and they go to interview Muller, he’d know what was going on for sure, even though they’ll still think it’s just an odd coincidence or similarities between generations of families.”
Diane thought about it a moment. “I have notes on the information, and there’s a log in the system that would indicate what searches I’d done, but the information itself has never been printed out. Unless another agent decides to run it again, that information is still sale, and certainly not in any report of mine. If I can stay in contact with my supervisor, I think I can get him to focus away from Muller. Then you—we’ll be a lot safer.”
“You think you’re going to have to meet with him face-to-face?” Lee knew that this would be the ultimate test of her loyalty.
She nodded. “An agent has been killed, and the shit’s already hit the fan in the Albuquerque office, count on it. SAC Lewis has got a chip on his shoulder about me already. I don’t think he likes Hispanics, and I know he’d like me to look like an idiot so he can get rid of me. He’ll be willing to give me just enough rope to hang myself as long as he doesn’t think I’ll bring him along with me. I’m going to have to call him. You suppose he’ll trace the call and try to locate me?”
“I’d count on him trying. He’s going to want to know your location, particularly since you’ll want to hold it back from him. He’s already lost one agent.”
“You’re reading Lewis correctly. The last thing he wants to do is lose control of me—his only link to what happened yesterday.” Diane looked around. “You don’t have a phone here, apparently. And I wouldn’t want to use it anyway. My cell phone, or maybe a pay phone somewhere?”
Lee walked over to the kitchen drawer, removed the contents, then turned over the drawer and removed a cell phone attached to the back with duct tape.
“There’s a charged battery plugged into the outlet in the hall bathroom. Use it and this to call him. It’s a cloned phone, and he’ll have problems tracing it. Just keep your call short, under a minute. Let him know where to meet you, maybe in front of the main library on the State campus, then hang up.”
“You think of everything?”
“Not yet. Eventually I will.” He smiled, and she smiled back.
CHAPTER 10
Two hours later, Lee drove down the alley behind a college area apartment complex. Halfway down the block he stopped, and Diane, who’d come back from her meeting, stepped up to the passenger door of the pickup and jumped in. He drove down the alley, pulled out into the street, then drove slowly around the neighborhood for several minutes to check for a tail. Diane crouched down, so it would appear that he was alone in the vehicle.
“Think he followed you?” Lee asked, keeping his eyes on traffic. “I
thought we had a tail for a moment, but the car turned away a block back.”
She peeked out from under the coat, still slouched low in the seat, and gave him a wicked grin. “Ray couldn’t find his butt with a global-positioning system. And I doubt he’d risk devoting manpower to tail me when he’d trying to find the wild animal that killed an FBI agent.”
“Put on the hat and jacket I brought, then you can sit up.”
Diane put on the western-style, red-satin windbreaker, tucked her shoulder-length hair into the hat, then shifted to sit normally. “Starting to get an achy-breaky back, sitting like that.”
“What did you find out?” Lee asked, scratching the fake beard he’d attached before leaving the safe house. The sunglasses were a different brand than he usually wore, but dark lenses were a necessity outside, where he’d eventually be unless he remained inside the vehicle until nightfall.
“The body is already at Albuquerque in the Office of Medical Investigators’ morgue at University Hospital. The pathologist says that the wounds on Agent Thomas’s body were probably inflicted by a large carnivore, and the animal hair found at the scene, and enormous paw prints found outside the window, support that theory. Couple that with the dead wolf and the bodies of two naked humans found in your apartment, and there is a real mystery going on. SAC Lewis is anxious to keep the details out of the press, and he kept insisting on getting more information from me.”
Lee nodded, looking in the rearview mirror to check for anyone who looked like he might be tracking his pickup. “You stick to the truth as much as you could?”