“What a weird guy!” I huffed, shifting sides of the chair to find comfort. Police station furniture wasn’t known for being luxurious.
He took a long swig of coffee from an oversized mug that said Trust me, I’m a doctor.
“Melanie Newsted claims she was falsely accused of child abuse, and Victoria was placed into a foster home at the age of five. Melanie stated she couldn’t afford to pay attorney’s fees to fight the case and eventually couldn’t afford her house rent because she had to spend so much money keeping herself out of jail for the child abuse charges.”
“Wait, if you don’t have money and you’re charged for a crime, don’t you get an attorney appointed to you?”
“That is true, but the attorney she was appointed at the time wasn’t telling her what she wanted to hear, so she hired somebody else. The court-appointed attorney was unwilling to fight the fight for Melanie. Hence, she lost Victoria, but the attorney she hired was able somewhat to fight the charges and keep her out of jail. The whole thing was an absolute mess. She placed an ad for a roommate to help with expenses, and that’s when she met Dimitri LeMorte. He moved in as her roommate and shared the bills while Victoria lived with the foster family for a few years. Melanie saved up for more attorneys’ fees during this time to get her daughter back.”
As a thunderous boom rattled the walls, I gasped for air, stifling a reactive scream. My face melted from shock to shame. My reaction entertained Detective Chase, nonetheless.
“Mother Nature’s screaming at somebody, huh?” he laughed.
I sighed, shaking my head. “Yeah, that one got me. Whew! So, how long was Victoria with the foster family?”
“She was taken away from her mother at five-years-old and lived in the foster home until she was eight.”
“That’s very sad,” I lamented, dropping my eyes towards the ground.
“Well, I have to warn you about Dimitri’s appearance, Fiona. You’ve never seen anything like it before, I can assure you.”
My imagination ran wild with tattoos, colored hair, morbid obesity to radical frailness, gigantism to dwarfism—all of the extremes of humanity.
“Lay it on me, Detective,” I challenged, not believing he could shock me.
He leaned forward, placing his elbows on the desk with outstretched hands, palms facing downward as if to set the stage for what he was about to say.
“He has what are called horn implants. They stick out of the sides of his forehead like skinned horns,” he blurted, leaning back into his chair, studying my reaction.
I wasn’t prepared for that. I had never heard of such things as implants for anything besides breasts. Horns? In your head? Beyond my comprehension, but slightly intriguing.
“Excuse me, Detective. They make implants that give you horns?”
He raised his eyebrows, shrugging a shoulder towards his tilted head. A puzzled mask of disdain on his face.
“Yes, skinned horns, tattooed as red spirals. He also has multiple tattoos on his face that look Gothic or tribal and a set of gold vampire fangs as permanent caps on his canine teeth. His hair is short, spiky and dyed bright red.”
I threw up my hands, palms facing him as if I were stopping traffic.
“Alright, Detective. You won. I’ve never seen anybody like that, and if I had, I would remember him. And this guy put a curse on you? What kind of curse?”
He raised his rounded shoulders and smirked hazily.
“Don’t know and don’t care. I obviously don’t believe in curses. It was just a strange act to perform on a law official, and I suppose it sets up this guy’s character. He drives a Harley motorcycle and is a member of the Devil’s Riders—a biker group that hangs out at the Gondola Bar south of Silver Springs Marina.”
“That place is serious trouble. My mom said people drift over to Hartford in the middle of the night and cause trouble on campus because they drank too much at that bar. Dean Worcroft has launched a crusade to shut the place down, claiming the students are in danger.”
The sky grew dark as night as the driving rain battered the window. I worried about Agent Bronson standing in the front but figured he had made his way to his car or came inside the station.
“We’ve made plenty of arrests in that place, mostly for fighting.”
“I bet,” I said, wiping my eyes with a tissue to make sure that I hadn’t run any mascara down my cheeks. “What about the vampire group, how is it organized? Is it just the one group in Godley Grove?”
“Dimitri’s the leader with subgroups, Houses, scattered in the southern region of the United States. As we know, Damien’s group is the House of the Nightmare Army, one of the smaller groups, only consisting of Damien, Victoria, Camber and they were inducting Sydney. I’ve received leads they were talking to more teens about joining the group, but I’m sure with the current murder case, those prospects will drop out, change their mind.”
“No doubt!”
A rumbling sounded from down the corridor. I turned around in my chair to see a boisterous elderly man in a white sleeveless t-shirt, in handcuffs, being escorted by two uniformed police officers. They struggled as he shouted random obscenities, fighting to escape their grips.
“Drunks, I swear,” Detective Chase chuckled while shaking his head in displeasure.
“That’s nuts. Yeah, I’d rather be on the investigation side of things when I finally work here and not have to deal with that,” I giggled, turning back around.
He scooted around his desk and shut his door. His office felt like a closet, but the window made it tolerable, albeit today was a challenge with the thunderstorm.
“Where was I?” he dropped into his wooden chair, whipping it around with the rollers against his rubber floor mat. “Oh Yeah, Dimitri’s Order of the Black Moon is a part of the bigger organization, the Southern Vampire Alliance. He is well-respected in that community and authored the five tenets. They are vampire society guidelines,” he detailed.
I stared at him with curious eyes. The torrential rain calmed into a misty drizzle, the sky a dark, steel gray. I hoped the thunder was over. At night, it was strangely calming, but a wicked nuisance during the day.
“Whoa, this is so weird. Vampire society guidelines? Do any of the tenets include sacrificing people?”
He pointed his index finger at me, nodding his head.
“Good thinking, Fiona. No, nothing about sacrifice. Most of them outline norms of society—if you ask me. The five tenets are detailed in that little Bible-looking black book they all carry. One tenet deals with consensual feeding, which means they only drink blood from another living person—if they are willing.”
“No way!”
Nausea hit me like a Greyhound bus. I tried to delete the mental images I created, but flashes of people drinking other people’s blood kept popping into my mind. It was more than repulsive.
“Unfortunately, Fiona. Some people do live this way. During criminal investigations, we learn about things you would never dream existed. Some of the scariest people, you learn every detail—their habits, their history, their inner thoughts. Get ready for it,” his voice was earnest.
I shivered. “I’m ready.” I looked at him, waiting.
“The tenets outline discretionary practices—they cannot tell humans they are vampires. They are to respect their elders, avoid large gatherings, and only perform rituals if they are in need of increased power—to fight an uprising of another order.”
“So, it does outline rituals? What kind of rituals?”
“It doesn’t specifically say. We’re assuming they all know, have been told verbally, and we’re working on getting the information we need. Oh, one more interesting thing—there’s a tattoo on Dimitri’s middle finger. It is two bold black stripes.”
“Wait a minute; the victim had one like that!”
“Yes, it is identical to the victim’s tattoo.”
“Is this a mark of the cult? Do the other members have it? Was the victim a member of the vampire cult?�
��
“No, it is not, and she was not associated with them, Fiona. We’ve done some research, and it is a mark of a Gothic cult from the seventies. It seems that Dimitri and the victim went to school together and were in the same group called the Dark Realm. They were not vampires—just a bunch of Goth kids trying to be different.”
“Well, he at least knew the victim. He’s the leader of this cult that supposedly killed this woman, so is he a suspect now? Where was he during the murder?”
His office phone rang—he held up an index finger, answering it. It was somebody from the serology section of his lab.
He walked the caller through a protocol for a genetic screening for polymorphism—a series of tests used to identify a suspect via their blood sample. When he inquired on how much of a sample the tech had, I knew he was asking to be sure he could run the test himself to ensure the results were valid. He hung up the phone with a sigh.
“Everything alright, Detective?”
“Oh yeah, Fiona. New hire. I’ve also hired two more serology techs; one is starting on Monday and the other, a week from that. Both of them have loads of experience so I will have that section running smoothly in no time. I’m over budget, but the Chief is working with me on that.”
Detective Chase was a tremendously effective leader. I hoped that one day; I would be able to handle running a forensic lab as efficiently as he did.
“Back to Dimitri LeMorte. His story is that he was running late for the middle of the Witching Hour meeting with the cult. He normally preferred to arrive twenty minutes early to start the candles and such. Dimitri stated he entered an empty cave, saw the body, and left immediately. Emily Vance said she saw the teens leave, discovered the body, and ran to the pay phone at the marina to call the police. As she was returning to the cave, she spotted Dimitri exiting—seconds before the police arrived. However, he could have been hiding out in the cave as nobody witnessed him arrive. We can only place the time he left the cave.”
A succession of obnoxious thunder rolls created a mandatory pause in our conversation. The rain kicked back up with a passion.
“Good point. Wow. Well, this case is getting more interesting by the minute, huh?”
“It gets better. Well, worse, Fiona. We ran a criminal history check on Dimitri LeMorte.”
“And was it a million pages long?”
“No, it was clean other than the traffic tickets.”
“Hmm,” I said airily, staring out his window at sheets of rain. I slumped in my chair.
“There’s something even more peculiar,” he said with a sly smile.
“Let’s hear it,” I said, snapping out of my rain-watching trance.
“Well, it seems he only recently changed his name to Dimitri LeMorte. His real name is Charlie Bing.”
I stifled a laugh at the name of a threatening-looking horned man named Mr. Bing.
“Well, Charlie Bing doesn’t sound very scary or vampire-like, so I can see why he’d want to go by Dimitri LeMorte,” I smirked.
“Fiona, Dimitri LeMorte is related to Gerald Smith—the fugitive who is after your father.”
7 JADE PALACE
I woke up the next morning with a monster headache and an aching sensation in the back of my throat. I figured it was because I had cried myself to sleep. I had an empty feeling as if I had lost a family member, a best friend. Luminal wasn’t there, but the mold of his body was still imprinted on his dog bed in the corner of my room. I had never experienced sadness like this. It was sorrow I needed Janice to help me deal with—yet she was in the hospital battling a deadly infection. My door creaked open.
“Fiona, I have some good news for once,” my mother said as she popped her head in my bedroom.
I threw my legs on the side of my bed and spun around to face her. Newspaper in hand, she was undeniably cute wearing her red-rimmed reading glasses.
“Please, let’s hear it. They caught Gerald Smith? Janice is coming home? Haley’s in New Zealand?”
She shook her head playfully.
“Fiona, be nice. Janice is out of ICU and is doing much better today. The doctor said it’s a miraculous recovery, but she’ll be there under close observation for at least five more days,” she reported.
I jumped off the side of my bed and rushed over to give her a quick hug. I let out a sigh of relief—this day was going to be a better one. My head was hot, maybe a fever, I shortened the hug for fear of her noticing—it didn’t take much to set off her worrywart trigger.
“Thanks for letting me know, Mom. That’s wonderful news. What about Haley? She’s just here, stuck in the house? How long is she suspended from school—or is she expelled? When is she going to New Zealand?”
The questions flooded into my mind faster than I could process. She scowled at me, the lines of her forehead deepening with her displeasure.
“Don’t be tacky. She’s your cousin so be nice and try to be supportive. She’s not allowed to go back to the high school this year. She’ll have to enroll in an alternative program on Monday. She made a new friend, a very pretty girl, gorgeous—I hear she comes from a good family. In fact, she’s going on a double date with her and some boys on Friday night.”
My legs weakened and instantly, my body forced a violent shudder. Thinking they’d give out, I backed into my foam chair. The thought of the friend my mother spoke of being Camber Johnson—and the double date including Wolfe nearly made me vomit all over my wooden floor.
“What about our house ban? Thought we weren’t allowed to go anywhere because of Gerald Smith?”
“Oh, Fiona. You know it’s impossible to prevent Haley from doing what she puts her mind to. Plus, I don’t think she’s in quite the danger that you are, sweetie, and this could be good for her.”
“Not fair! What is the friend’s name, Mom? Do you know?”
I didn’t want to ask, but if I didn’t, I would be consumed with curiosity until I found out.
“I think it’s Amber or Camber, something like that.”
Feigning happiness for Haley, I took in slow, deep breaths to calm the chaos going on inside of me. I couldn’t lose my cool in front of my mother. My instinct compelled me to march into Haley’s room to strangle her for being part of this new-found happy quartet. After a strong exhale, I pretended something was caught in my throat, and forced out my next words.
“And who is the boy that Haley is going out with?”
“Carden Doyle. I think he’s been over here for you before, huh? Isn’t he in your forensic club?”
Blinking my eyes, I made sure I was in reality and not a dream. Stunned. My fever spiked a few degrees and also became a reality. Carden Doyle was in my circle of friends. He had even asked Maddie to the prom, and now he was switching over to the dark side with my trouble-making cousin? Could Maddie have known about this? I realized that Maddie and Carden weren’t in an official relationship, but she was happy that he asked her to the prom, nonetheless. I would have to break the news to her—she was my best friend. I could only guess the fourth person was Wolfe. Angry at the world with an unjustified rage, I scolded myself for not doing anything to stop the budding relationship between Wolfe and Camber.
With a gaping hole in my heart, I checked my emails on my home computer. I found the daily report from Detective Chase and scanned it as quickly as I could. He would pick me up after school, and I was to ride with him to some locations to investigate the case. A much-needed distraction.
Still no bacon sizzling on the stove, I grabbed a strawberry Pop-tart from the kitchen pantry and headed out to the car with Agent Bronson. I wasn’t the kind that had to heat them in the toaster. I was surprised he dressed in a navy suit. In an exceptional mood, he chatted about baseball on the way to school; I don’t care for baseball, but he made it interesting, nevertheless.
“Fiona, are you alright? You don’t look well,” he inquired.
“I’m fine. I might have a touch of something, but I’ll get over it by lunch, always do. Have a great day!�
�� I lied.
As the day progressed, a sickness ravaged my body. It took all of the courage I could muster to enter Mrs. Garcia’s class knowing I would see Wolfe. I’d need to suppress a brewing tirade about him going out with Camber on a double date with my horrid cousin.
I didn’t like what I had become on the inside. Looking at it from the outside perspective, I behaved irrational, like a crazy person. Wolfe had given me chances to tell him how I felt, and I didn’t take advantage of any of them. Granted, I was going through some difficult times, but I realized I never even told him what was going on with me. He must have thought I was cultivating a professional working relationship with him—as he requested. Maybe he thought I rejected him, after all, and he was throwing himself at Camber for a diversion? Maybe he was the one who was upset? My reasoning made me feel worse as I rounded the corner and entered the classroom.
The bell rang; Wolfe’s chair at the front remained empty. I scooted quickly to my seat, confused; I pulled out my spiral notebook. He hadn’t missed one day of school since I could remember. I couldn’t imagine where he was, and then, the thought of him getting a schedule change raced in my mind. Was he that desperate to avoid me? I couldn’t help it, so I sent him a text message.
Wolfe, why are you not in class? I am going to have a club meeting at seven tonight.
I had a motive for the meeting, but it was, in the end, necessary—the lab was still shut down at the school. To cover my tracks, I also shot a text to the rest of the club about the meeting, hoping that nobody had a conflict.
As soon as the bell rang for lunch, I rushed to the nurse’s office and lied about having a headache so I could get Tylenol. My mom kept a bottle in the nurse’s office for me in case I ever needed it. I needed to reduce my fever; I was getting sicker by the minute.
Fiona Frost: Order of the Black Moon Page 8