by Ray Garton
"Don't worry, we'll be fine."
"Okay, I'll do that, Davey," Benedek said. "I can't thank you enough."
Afterward, Casey said, "What do you think?"
Davey said, "I think that somebody who can afford to hire private investigators just to find out if vampires really exist or not is probably somebody with too much money and time. What do you think?"
"I don't know," Casey said. "Do you suppose someone finally believes Walter? After all these years?"
"Could be," Davey said. "We'll see."
CHAPTER SEVEN
"I haven't told my story to anyone since I wrote that piece for the Post," Benedek said. He sat across from her in a booth at the Coffeepot Cafe.
Karen had just been served her omelette and hash-browns when Benedek had come into the diner and joined her. He knew the waitress by name—Gladys, who had the lined and sagging face of a woman in her late fifties, but hair that had been dyed jet-black. Not a single white hair was visible, and Karen had found the look unsettling. Benedek had ordered an English muffin with margarine on the side.
"If you've read the Post piece," he said, "then you know the story. What more do you want me to tell you?"
Karen opened her briefcase on the seat beside her and retrieved a microcassette recorder. "I hope you don't mind if I record our conversation. It will be played only for my client, and no one else."
"Can I get that in writing?"
Karen smiled. "I'm afraid I don't have a copy of that particular form with me at the moment."
"I suppose I should just be grateful that someone finally wants to listen to this story, to take it seriously."
"I'm not out to laugh at you, Mr. Benedek. Neither is my client. I'm taking this investigation very seriously." Karen put the small recorder in the center of the table and pressed a shiny silver button with a red dot on it. "How did you become aware of the vampires, Mr. Benedek."
Gladys brought Benedek's English muffin and he slowly spread the margarine on each half as he talked. "My sister was suspicious of her husband. He was coming home late, way too late, and he didn't look well. I was on vacation at the time, so I agreed to tail him for a little while, see what he was up to. He went straight to a little peep-show in Times Square called Live Girls. While he was there, he was bitten by a vampire. He was forced to exchange blood with a vampire, and he was turned. Into a vampire. Then he slaughtered my sister and niece."
He took a bite of his muffin and chewed slowly.
Benedek said, "I knew there was something up with that peep-show joint, so I kept an eye on it. That's how I met Davey."
"Who's Davey?"
"Davey Owen. A friend of mine now, although he was a stranger at the time. He went into Live Girls looking fine, then limped out looking drained. I struck up a conversation with him, got his confidence. He changed right before my eyes, Miss Moffett. He died, but his body kept on living. Technically, he should be dead, but he's not, see. I put him through a little test. We found out that crucifixes had no affect on him. He had a reflection in the mirror. But he couldn't stand garlic, had an immediate reaction to it."
Karen said, "You're telling me your friend became a vampire?"
"Yes. He had a relationship with one of the performers from Live Girls, a beautiful vampire named Anya. She also worked at the Midnight Club, which I investigated myself, by the way, and it was not only run by them, but they were storing up great quantities of blood in the back. That's where I found my brother-in-law."
"You found him?" Karen said. "What did you do?"
He took another bite of the muffin and took his time chewing it. "I found out they heal very quickly .. . but they can be killed if you do it right."
A silence fell over them for about twenty seconds.
Karen said, "In your article, you mention mutated vampires that were being kept in the basement of Live Girls."
Benedek nodded. "I've learned the story behind those things from Davey. They were vampires who had gone out on their own a little too early, without the guidance of someone older and wiser. Without a sponsor, you might say. They leave the nest too early and don't know enough to avoid drug addicts, or people with possible diseases of the blood, and they are mutated by that bad blood. It happened to Davey—he lost the use of his left hand."
Frowning, Karen said, "That's fascinating. What about Davey? What became of him?"
"Oh, he's very happily married now. His wife Casey is one, too. She was held captive at Live Girls and turned."
"Your friends are living a ... normal life?"
"Oh, sure. They live in Los Angeles now, and they're successful screen writers. They write romantic comedies, of all things."
"And no one has a clue."
"Now you do. I hope you meant what you said about confidentiality."
"This is for my client's eyes only."
"They're not alone, either, Davey and Casey," Benedek said. "There are plenty more just like them, living among us as if they were us, when they're not. Not at all. I'm not saying there's one on every street-corner, because there's not, but they're around. They manage to blend in quite well. According to Davey and Casey, they tend to be urban, although there are some in the suburbs, as well. In rural areas, too."
"Are they organized in any way?"
"They own a chain of blood banks all over the country—a kind of co-operative—from which they get most of the blood, which is sold by the bottle in the backs of shops run by vampires. You know, small grocers or antique shops, something with a front like that, and then in the back, they sell blood to vampires."
"So, they drink ... bottled blood?"
"Not all of them. I'm talking about only one specific segment of the vampire world. There are many who do not drink bottled blood. They like to get their blood the old-fashioned way. They prey on people. These predators are very dangerous. Some are monsters. Most vampires fall into that category. And yet, some of the people being preyed upon aren't even aware they're victims, only that they feel a little tired and worn out, more fatigued than usual."
"They don't remember being bitten?"
"These vampires are very powerful. They can cloud the mind, fog up the memory. I think it's a kind of hypnosis. Some victims are simply drained and discarded. Some are held in captivity and fed on over a period of time. It's frightening to think how many unsolved murders or missing persons out there are the work of vampires. They never get caught. That's why I want to tell my story to you. Maybe your client is in a position to do something about it."
Karen said, "Your friend is in the minority, then?"
"I'm afraid so."
"What would happen if vampires were exposed?"
He nodded as he chewed another bite of his muffin. "I've often thought about that. I can imagine the fear and paranoia that would break out. People would start suspecting their neighbors of being vampires, maybe even their own family members. They would also commit acts of violence against real vampires when they found them. Those who've managed to blend in and make peaceful lives for themselves would probably be weeded out and killed. And I'm sure a number of innocent people would be killed because they were mistaken for vampires. It would be awful."
"You paint an ugly picture," Karen said.
"I have great faith in the human race, Karen. Whenever possible, it will probably do the wrong thing."
"Why have you decided to talk to me?" Karen said. "Do you think something can be gained by it?"
"To be honest... there's a part of me that wants them to be exposed. Then everyone else would have to live with the fear I've lived with for the last eighteen years. No one would go out at night, and they would rub crushed garlic around their windows and doors. I do that, you know."
"I thought I smelled garlic at your house."
"It's not a very sociable thing to do, but I never want to see one of those things come to my window again."
"When did that happen?"
"One of them came to our bedroom window and dragged off my wife. B
ack in New York." His eyes narrowed, and his jaw flexed. "Took her away from me. I found her in the basement of Live Girls later. They'd ... fed her to those ... things in that basement."
Benedek took off his glasses and put them on the table while he wiped his eyes with a knuckle.
"Sorry," he said, and his voice broke on the word.
"You didn't include that in your Post article, Walter. Why?"
"I couldn't write about it yet. I tried, but couldn't. It had just happened. I was distraught."
"Wait. You're saying one of these things dragged off your wife and fed her to mutant vampires?"
"Yes. That's what I'm saying."
"What did you tell the police?"
He shrugged. "That I woke up in the morning and she was just gone. They investigated, found no signs of foul play. She's still... missing. Now, maybe you understand why I'm reluctant to tell my story. It's still very painful. I wrote the article for the Post in a fit of hubris. I was righteously indignant and thought exposing them was the most important thing I could do. I thought about the lives I'd save simply by letting people know they were out there, to beware of them. I was an idiot. The only people who paid any attention to that piece were the tabloids. I've lived in fear ever since that article was published. A rumor circulated at the Times that I'd written it, but no one ever knew for sure if I had or not. But that wasn't what worried me. If the rumor was flying around at work, then was it possible that the vampires knew who really wrote that article? I retired early a couple years later and got the hell out of the city. I moved here, as much for my health as the fishing. I needed peace and quiet. I needed to relax."
"And have you? Relaxed, I mean?"
"For the most part, yes, I have. But there's a part of me that can never relax, can never let down its guard. It's the part of me that knows they're out there. After a lifetime of thinking of them as nothing more than mythological figures at best, I find out they're real, and they're living among us. That's a tough thing to get over."
Karen cocked her head. "You say all this as if it's just... I don't know, an everyday thing."
"It is an everyday thing for me. Every day, I go around the windows and doors with garlic cloves, crushing them into the wood. Every day, I wonder if this will be the day they finally find me and decide to pop up and make me pay for writing that piece. Every day."
Karen noticed Benedek's hands were trembling. They were big hands, with prominent blue veins mapping their backs. She reached across the table and put a hand on top of his. "Walter, I'm going to ask something of you, and when I do, I want you to think about it before you answer. Really think about it and ask yourself what harm it could do."
Benedek nodded as he pulled his hand away and said, "You're going to ask me to introduce you to Davey and Casey."
Karen put her hands flat against the table on each side of her plate. "All I'm asking for is a lunch. Let me buy them lunch so I can talk to them. I'll take it from there."
"I've already arranged for you to meet with them. You'll have to go to their house."
"That's it? It's that easy?"
"I knew you'd want to talk to them, so I called them, got their okay. If they hadn't agreed to meet with you, I wouldn't have told you anything. I wanted Davey and Casey to back me up, and they've agreed to do that."
"Thank you for arranging that. I expected you to say no."
Karen realized she had not touched her cheese omelette and hashbrowns. As she ate, she experienced a feeling of gratification—it was her first day on the investigation, and already it seemed she'd tracked down some "vampires."
As Karen ate, Benedek said, "What do you make of all this, Karen? I know it's your job to gather information about vampires—" He always lowered his voice when he said that word. "—but what do you think so far?"
"Frankly, I'm fascinated."
"Good. Your job may be dangerous, but at least it's not boring you."
CHAPTER EIGHT
Keoph sat at the computer in Karen's office. He had spent the day searching the Internet for everything he could find about vampires. His knowledge of the nocturnal bloodsuckers did not extend beyond the horror movies he'd seen about them. He found numerous Web sites run by people who claimed to be vampires and had vampire names like Midnight Moonglow or Vladimir Gaunt. Many of them were involved in elaborate role-playing games about vampires. Many of them, Keoph imagined, were simply lonely people desperate for some attention.
He found scholarly articles about vampires, and about the movies and literature that kept them alive, and he found a few vampire entries in encyclopedic sites about fantasy and mythology. He read of a few vampire myths from other cultures. But he found little he didn't already know about them.
Keoph already knew vampires rose at night to suck the blood of the living, that they could not tolerate sunlight, they were repulsed by crucifixes, holy water, and garlic, and the only way to kill them, besides beheading or purifying fire, was to drive a wooden stake through the heart.
How do I know all that? he thought.
He had never sought out information about vampires before. He had, instead, absorbed it over the years. The vampire rules had been as solid as facts in his mind by the time he was ten years old. Who, in a million years, would guess that he would turn to them again now, as an adult, without so much as a smirk on his face.
His cell phone played a pinched trumpet fanfare— dah dah-dah daaah!—and he took it from his coat pocket.
"Keoph."
"Hello, Keoph. Karen here."
"Where are you?"
"I'm at the airport, on my way home. Guess what?"
"I don't have a clue."
"Tomorrow, you and I are having lunch with two real-life, honest-to-God vampires."
"Are you drunk, or am I?"
"Neither nor. It's all set up."
"You mean, I'm going to have to spend my lunch tomorrow listening to a couple loons talk about death and eternal life and the power of blood? If it's a couple of those weirdo goth kids—"
"It's two successful screen writers, Keoph, not a couple of wackos. I think it's important we both attend this interview."
"How serious are you about this, exactly?" Keoph said.
"I'm very serious. Benedek is setting us up with two close friends of his, a man and a woman, married, living a perfectly normal life. And they're vampires. They were both turned by vampires from Live Girls in Times Square, the place that blew up."
"Well, I guess we'll see about that," Keoph said with a chuckle.
"I'll give you all the details when I get back. I think we should sit down and carefully discuss tomorrow's interview. We need to agree on our goals, yes?"
"Yes, I agree."
"I think the two most important things we can do tomorrow is gain their confidence and start a relationship with these two, and then get more names from them."
"More names?"
"The names of more vampires. I want to get an idea of how many there are out there, how common they are."
"Wait a second, hold it," Keoph said. "Your mind is already made up, isn't it? You've already decided these people are vampires."
"Wrong, Keoph. I'm assuming they believe they're vampires, and taking it from there. If these are the vampires Burgess wants us to find—-a bunch of delusional people who believe they're immortal vampires—then I think we should learn as much about them as we can. Maybe it's some kind of cult, I don't know. Anyway, he's paying us a lot of money, so I think we should produce."
"Are you questioning my work ethic?" Keoph said with a smirk.
"Don't be a boob, Keoph. Of course I'm not. I'm just saying, this is probably the closest thing we're going to get to real vampires, so we should use them to do our job."
"I can't argue with that." —
"Are you at my office?"
"Yes."
"Stick around. I'll see you there when I get back."
Keoph turned back to the computer and clicked on another link in his search. A p
hotograph opened up of Christopher Lee as Dracula, surrounded by four gorgeous, voluptuous women with blood on their mouths. The caption below read, "Dracula and his brides."
Keoph made a "hmph" sound and muttered, "Dracula always gets all the great women."
Karen sat waiting in a terminal of the airport in Rochester, New York. She thought about the upcoming interview. She had been asked by Benedek more than once if the information they were gathering was for publication. She wasn't sure what Burgess had in mind for these so-called vampires once they'd been found.
She took her cell phone from her purse again. She had already programmed Burgess's cell number into her phone's memory. She pushed a couple buttons, then put the phone to her ear.
"Hello," Burgess said.
"Mr. Burgess, this is Karen Moffett calling."
"Miss Moffett. Is anything wrong?"
"Well, I'm not sure. I need to know something from you. I've found two people who claim to be vampires, and we'll be talking to them tomorrow. They only ask one thing—that none of this sees publication. Are you planning to write about these people?"
"Uh, well, to be honest... I'm not sure what I'm going to do if you should find some real vampires out there. My only concern so far has been the hunt."
"Look, Mr. Burgess, I have to be able to tell these people you're not going to publish what you learn about them. And I won't tell them that if it's not true."
"I see. Well, I can tell you this—I have no plans to publish any of it. I never have. Remember what happened to that horror writer who claimed to have been abducted by aliens? He went public with it and wrote a book about it—a few, actually—and now he's not known for being a good writer anymore, which he is, because he's known as the nut job who was anally probed by aliens and got rich off writing books about it. I'm doing this to satisfy my own curiosity, not to take some kind of expose to the press, or anything like that. Tell them they have nothing to worry about."
"Thank you. I'm glad to hear that."