“It was more than that, Silas. Danner and Riley were more than that. I owe it to them to take this guy out, and that’s what I’m going to do.”
“By yourself?”
“No, I’ve got a crew, and they are as tough as they come. One is on his way there now to do some early recognizance. When he gets the lay of the estate, then we’ll finalize, and go in. I’ll be okay; don’t worry. I just needed to talk to you for a second, just to hear you. Look for me in a couple weeks, Silas, we’ll rock L.A. I gotta get back now. Love you.”
The phone went dead in Silas’ ear, and he slowly lowered it down, and stuck it in his pocket.
Shit, Amp, you stupid, stupid girl, he thought. Why couldn’t you have just grieved and moved on?
Starting to put her phone away, Amp changed her mind, and punched in another number. Waiting for Amylee to answer, she wondered if she would live long enough to see her L.A. friends again.
“This is Amy,” the girl answered.
“Hey stranger, it’s Amp.”
“Amp, it’s so good to hear from you. Where are you…in L.A?”
“Nope, not California. Hey, this has to be quick, I just called to tell you how much you mean to me, how your friendship saved my sanity. If…if I don’t see you again, know that I…and Danner, we love you, Amy. Thanks for all you did for me.”
“Amp, what’s going on, you’re scaring me. Are you in some kind of trouble? Talk to me, girl, what can I do?”
“No trouble, Amy, just finishing up my business. Hope to see you guys soon. I just…you know, I had to tell you how I felt. I gotta run, tell Morgan I said hi, and thank him for me. Love you, bye.”
She hung up, the sadness taking over. No more calls, she thought. I’ve said my goodbyes. Now all that’s left is war.
------
The trip to Petersburg took an hour, Rio sitting in a deck chair watching the scenery, his bag safely at his side. He spoke to no one, and his look discouraged any attempt at friendship. He spent the hour mentally putting his game face on. He was preparing to put his life on the line, something he had spent more than a decade doing on a regular basis. It was time to go to war, and he was a man who knew exactly how to do it.
The town was much the way he had envisioned it after studying it on Google Earth, as well as reading everything about it on the internet. He was pleased to find a taxi upon departing the ferry, the walk into town with his bag of assorted goodies not something he was looking forward to.
“Tide’s Inn,” he said to the taxi driver, an old gnarly looking man with two fingers missing from the hand that draped the steering wheel, an unfiltered cigarette held firmly between two of the remaining ones.
“Ten dollars,” were the only words the man said during the short drive down Nordic Drive to First Street. There wasn’t much to the town, and Rio reminded himself that it was much harder to stay low in a small crowd. He would have to be unassuming and low key while in town in order not to call attention to himself.
The motel wasn’t much, exactly what he had been looking for. It was the low end place on the island, and people would be less likely to take notice of odd hours activities.
After unpacking his gear, and laying everything on his bed, he took a quick inventory. He had brought along several variations of camouflage fatigues, gloves, boots, stocking hats, and long johns. He had a Colt 1907 .45 automatic, his M89 Bolt Action Rifle, one of the short-stocked M-1014 shot guns, one of the M-4s, plenty of ammunition for the job, night goggles and a brand new night scope for the M89. He had brought two different types of knives, a small amount of C-4 explosives, two disposable cell phones, both of which he plugged in to charge as soon as he entered the room, and a large roll of duct tape. Making sure that everything was in working order, and no damage had incurred during the trip, he was finally satisfied.
There was still several hours of daylight, so he left the motel and found the downtown area easily. He looked in the windows of several of the stores, surprised at the contrast of modern stores, and those that seemed to have been caught in a time warp. He located the Harbor Bar, remembering the actions that had taken place from Amp’s narrative. As he walked towards the entrance, he looked around, wondering exactly where Amp had taken the vampire’s head the night she fled town?
What a crazy thing for her to have done, he thought. That girl is dangerous. He had seen her in action, both during their training days, and fighting the five vamps at Mount Vernon; enough for Rio to want her on his side in this fight.
The tavern was exactly as Amp had described it, the long bar on the left, the room opening up as he walked farther in. The bar area was full, but not many folks in the back. There were a couple boys playing pool at one of the three tables, and one waitress standing around with not much to do. As soon as he sat down, she headed for his table.
Late forties, her best days behind her, she greeted him with a smile that showed a missing bottom tooth and two cheeks full of wrinkles. Looking closer, he saw she had a lazy right eye that drifted. He didn’t want to stare, but watching her eye was like driving past a bad car wreck; you didn’t want to look, but something inside of you made it impossible not to.
“Hey there, don’t reckon I’ve seen you around. What can I get ya?” she asked, her friendly manner bordering on manic, the last sentence coming out as one word.
“Bud light, and a cold mug if you have it, please,” Rio answered.
“Comin’ up, good looking,” the woman grinned, sending cold chills down Rio’s back. Please Lord, never let me get to the point that something like that wakes up next to me.
Looking around at the other patrons, Rio wondered if anyone in the bar was vampire. He didn’t think so, after the description Amp gave of Wilson’s boys. The characters in the bar all looked human; fishermen or loggers, or laborers.
He signaled for another beer, knowing the two would help him nap before preparing for his first excursion into the forest around Wilson’s compound. He planned to leave the hotel at dark, his route mapped out in his head. This first night would be a ‘get familiar with the territory walk,’ nothing serious, more a stroll in the woods.
As he was paying the barmaid for the beer, he noticed a stunning blonde woman enter the door. She seemed out of place, well dressed, with a certain upper-class bearing. As he watched her settle on a stool at the bar, he could see that she was known to the locals, smiling and laughing with the bartender, nodding and making small-talk with several of the patrons.
He had a suspicion this was Wilson’s woman. She certainly fit Amp’s description. For some reason, he had envisioned her as somehow different, more detached, and Dracula like.
He smiled at his ignorance. Nikka and Amp nothing like the stereotypes of vampire lore; why would this woman be any different?
Making his way to the bar on the pretense of checking out the bottles lined neatly beneath the mirror, he listened to the conversation going on between the bartender and the lovely blonde.
“…just in to pick up some supplies, maybe if things are okay tomorrow, I’ll make it back in for the day. You working tomorrow, Billy?” The blonde was flirting, but not in what Rio thought as a serious tone. It sounded much like two people who had been intimate in the past, now wasting time with each other.
“Working all day; every day this week. Busy as hell this time of year, summer kids will start pouring their sorry asses in before long. That should make you happy, all those young studs here for a couple of months.” He was joking with her, and they were both laughing, but Rio noticed her eyes drift to him, giving him a long look from top to bottom before returning her eyes to her friend.
“I have to run, thanks for the drink,” she finished, pushing away from the bar.
“Come see me tomorrow, Miriam,” Billy said over his shoulder.
She gave Rio one more look before turning and walking back into the sunlight, the door closing, the sweet scent of her perfume left behind.
Small fricking town, Rio smiled. Miriam, t
he vampire’s woman, live and in color. Amp, you are going to be so proud of me.
He would make it a priority to be in the Harbor Bar this time tomorrow.
------
“We have a guest coming tomorrow evening,” Wilson was telling two of his young vampires when Miriam came through the door. “Oh, there you are, my dear. Did you get all of your errands finished?”
“Who’s coming?” she asked, sidestepping the question, ignoring the two vampires standing almost at attention. She was developing a strong revulsion to the young vampires that Beryl surrounded himself with.
Is it worth all of this, she asked herself, looking around at the child vampires playing warrior? Certainly there were many positives to living this type of life, chief among them Wilson’s ability to extend her life indefinitely, as well as living a comfortable, wealthy lifestyle.
On the other side of the equation, Beryl’s promise to turn her seldom came up in conversations anymore. When she mentioned it, he would ignore her, or it would lead into another tirade, ending with her being badly beaten. Lately, he had introduced her to a new game. He would feed from her until she lost consciousness, taking so much of her blood that she would approach death, and then restore her. Miriam’s body was beginning to feel the negative effects of these near death experiences, and she knew it was inevitable he would one night brush her aside, and simply leave her to die. It was time to find a way out, preferably with her life, and enough money to live comfortably.
“We’re entertaining a friend who I haven’t seen in a long, long while, somebody I knew well before your time, my dear, although we communicate regularly. He’s never been to Alaska. This is a pleasure trip for him. I want all of the family to welcome him…you know, our best faces on and such. Please see to that, darling. Oh, one more thing. This man is rather traditional, if I remember correctly. If he should desire any…ah, intimate companionship, I expect you to take care of that, please, as well as permitting him to feed. I’m sure he will appreciate your particular charms.”
This was the first time Wilson had ever suggested turning her out to a guest, and the idea disgusted her.
“I am not your resident whore, Beryl, nor will I start. If your guest needs some relief, get down on your knees, and give it to him.” She was livid, and the smile on Wilson’s face made it twice as bad.
“You will do whatever I ask, Miriam. You have no options…none. Think about that before you speak to me in that tone again.”
He was forcing a confrontation, Miriam realized, and the end result could not be good for her. It had been brewing since last year, when several of Beryl’s children had showed up in answer to his paranoid call. She had been amazed at the difference of the vampires from the lower 48 in comparison with the ones that Beryl surrounded himself with here in Alaska.
Many of them had come and listened, and they all left soon after, back to their lives south of Alaska. Nobody in their right minds wanted to have anything to do with Wilson, and his dreams of grandeur. She heard story after story of the man creating children for his sick amusements, then abandoning them when he got bored.
The two he had murdered in cold blood had been the best of the entire lot. A waste of two good men, and it had sickened her. Since that day, her hatred for Wilson trumped every other emotion, and her entire focus was to escape with her life.
Wilson noticed the change, realized the end was near in his relationship with Miriam. Their times together had become much too confrontational, the woman constantly demanding privileges she had no rights to.
She has forgotten, he mused often, that she is nothing but food, like a cow giving milk, knowing in the end that it would be butchered for the meat.
The only thing keeping Miriam among the living was her business expertise. Soon, he would have to find a replacement, someone as knowledgeable with regard to his businesses and as brilliant with his investments.
Walking away from her, he thought about his promise of turning her. He had never once considered it, had used the lie as incentive for her duties around the compound. Truth be known, Beryl Wilson would be terrified of turning Miriam. She was more formidable than anyone he had ever met, and she would make a terrifying opponent.
Yes, he would enjoy watching her abused by others. Maybe, if things went well, she might just get screwed to death. That would be a fitting end to the bitch.
------
“Hi. Just calling to let you know I’m settled in at the motel. I’m going out tonight after dark, see if I can find the compound, and get my bearing…hide a bunch of equipment in the woods so the maids don’t think I’m a mad bomber or something. Is everything okay in Wrangell?”
Rio was talking to Nikka on the phone as he was getting his gear prepared for the walk to the Wilson property.
“Sitting around waiting to hear from you,” Nikka answered. “Amp and Robert are planning to run through the woods tonight, and look for bears and wolves. They’re acting like little kids who’ve found a big, new playground. I’m gonna just hang out…if you need anything, I’ll have my phone in my hand all night.”
“There is one thing to tell Amp,” he continued. “I went into the bar today, wanted a beer, and thought I’d scout out the locals. While I was sitting there, the woman, Miriam, came in, and had a drink. She was real friendly with the bartender, but sure gave me a long look. She told the bartender she’d see him tomorrow. I’m going to make sure I’m there, see if there’s anything I can get from her that could help us.”
“Is she as good looking as Amp said she was?”
“Yeah, she is, pretty much; and just as lonely, unless I’m way off base.”
Nikka thought a minute. “Are you beating around the bush with me about how you’re going to get information from this woman?”
“I just…”
She interrupted him. “Listen to me, Rio. We have a bond, a really strong bond, and I like that, I like you…a lot. You do whatever is necessary to get close to this person. I’ll be as truthful as I can…I would do it if it meant saving my friend’s lives. I want all four of us to come out of this alive, and I want you with me when this is over...no matter what you do this week. Don’t let your human feelings get in the way of the mission. Think like a vampire…clinically and emotionless. The great vampire Machiavelli had it right: ‘The end does justifies the means.’ Do you understand what I’m saying?”
She could hear him breathing, imagined him thinking about what she said. He knew sex was more casual in the vampire world, but he also knew that he and Nikka were on the way to building something special. He felt like he was walking a tightrope.
“Okay, I’ll give you a call tomorrow night, see what I find out. If anything exciting happens tonight, which I don’t expect, I’ll check in. Take care of those two yahoos. Take care of you, too.”
“You take care, Rio. Don’t do anything stupid around that compound. His vampires are not especially well trained, but they are still vampires. Don’t you ever forget that.”
“Okay, talk to you later.”
The phone was dead, Nikka staring out the window, wondering how she had got so close to a human in such a short period of time…and glad that she had.
------
The following afternoon Rio was back in the Harbor Bar, the barmaid from hell nowhere in sight.
A college-age cutie was working the back room, every table full. The place was loud, the beer was flowing, and Rio felt a satisfaction in what he had accomplished so far. The night before he had found the Wilson compound, the place lit up like the L.A. airport at night, a ten foot black iron fence surrounding the entire property. He tried not to think about Amp’s friend’s heads staked to the top of the structure, the inhumanity of it a reminder of the animals they were dealing with.
He found several areas that would give him sufficient cover for the mission, as well as a small cave-like formation where he stored his equipment in watertight bags. He had climbed a tree, giving himself a clear view of the front of the hous
e, his night vision goggles working perfectly. He had his sniper rifle with him, and several times he had zeroed in on people coming and going.
Judging by what he saw, there was some sort of security on the grounds, although he judged it sloppy. On a scale of one to ten, he rated the security mechanism of the compound a three. Not good for them, he thought; very good for us.
Rio stayed in the tree for several hours, keeping a close record of when the guards made their rounds, the number involved, and what weapons he saw and could identify. Stiff and growing tired, he climbed back down, and made the 3 mile walk back to the Tide’s Inn, and slept until late afternoon.
He sat in the bar for close to an hour, wondering if the woman would show, and trying to imagine how he would approach her without being too suspicious.
He needn’t have worried. She came through the door at the same time as the day before, dressed in designer jeans, a cream sweater, and hiking boots. Waving at Billy, she continued on into the back, standing and looking around, nodding at a few people, smiling at the men, and finding Rio at his corner table. Without hesitation, she walked toward him, stopping with her hand on the back of the empty chair across from him.
“Looks like a full house today,” she smiled, even better looking than he had thought. “Do you mind if I join you?”
“Please do, I could use the company,” he replied, smiling at her as she pulled the chair out and sat. The barmaid appeared immediately, wiping the table off in front of the woman.
“Hey, Miriam, nice to see you? What can I get you today?” she asked, sticking the rag in her back pocket
“Bridget, you’re looking so grown up. I’m glad they hired you for the summer. How about having Billy fix me up with a Peppermint Twist, heavy on the schnapps…and bring my friend another Bud Light, please.”
Kill Wilson (Petersburg Vampires) Page 16