by Jeff Seats
Eager to be rescued from her dark place, Ellie gladly took the lifeline, “Oh, and the person playing Alex, talk about an overthe-top performance. And they made no attempt at trying to make him look anything like he really does. Heck, he looked more like George Hamilton than Alex.”
Paul looked at her sideways not understanding the reference.
“Love At First Bite? George Hamilton plays Dracula in the . . . haven’t you watched any of the vampire movies in the library?”
“Yeah, saw it with you remember?” He gave her a wink and a smile. “I thought he looked more like a young Khan.“
Now it was Ellie’s turn to give him the questioning eyes.
“You know. ‘Khan!’” He yelled out emotionally. “Ricardo Montalban, Star Trek Wrath of Khan?”
“Oh, wouldn’t that be an irony?” she asked speculatively. “Using an actor, who would later play a character named Khan, to play the role of the Khan of the vampire race. Thinking like that can twist the brain.”
“So where’re the action teams? All of ‘em seem to be off the base today.”
“Full moon tonight. They were all sent to DELTA to help contain the lycans.”
“That sounds like less fun than . . .,” he picked up a dirty sock from the back of St. Jean’s locker, “Phew! This one’s ripe!” He tossed it into a bag.
“Yeah, but at least it would be doing something important,” Ellie said brushing away a lock of her hair from her eyes.
A phone on the wall rang.
Paul was closest and moved to answer it.
Ring. Ring. Ring.
“Yeah, Yeah. Hold on. I’m almost there.” The fourth ring was about to sound when he picked up the receiver.
“Paul’s cleaning service. No job too . . . Oh! Commander Cole . . . Yes, Ellie’s here too . . . Yes, ma’am. We’ll be right over ma’am.” Paul hung up the phone and turned to Ellie, slightly dumbfounded.
“Yes? And?”
“We’ve gotta go over to the boss’s office right now,” Paul responded as he removed his cleaning gloves.
“I told you your sense of humor was going to get you in trouble. Now you’re taking me down with you. Okay, what did you do this time?”
“Nothing.” He said with some indignation in his voice. “She has an assignment for us. A real one. Okay?”
««« ‡ »»» COMMANDER COLE SET her pen down on the desktop when she heard muffled voices coming from outside the office door. She stared at the wooden surface as though willing it to open would be enough. Not even vampires could move inanimate objects through mere thought. It was an odd thing, she considered, how some people were awed by titles and chain of command. She didn’t know what to anticipate from Ellie and Paul, but she wouldn’t have put her money on this behavior. The doorknob turned slightly then stopped drawing her out of her musings. This time she stared even harder, not believing, but hoping the force of her will could motivate them to barge right in or at least to knock for God’s sake, anything to get beyond this silliness. Maybe the pins would pop up out of the hinges, and the door would miraculously fall to the floor. When she was growing up, she had often practiced mentally willing someone’s head to explode. Not the undeserving. Just the girl who took her Barbie. Or the jock in high school who thought he could grab her breast as he had backed her into the open locker. Later on, she had identified at least one drill sergeant who seemed to be asking for it, too. She would give the back of her target’s head an intense glare; believing that if she hit the correct frequency—or whatever it was—the head would pop outward, spreading its watermelon-like innards around the parade ground.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
Progress! Thank God.
“Enter!” She barked. Best to put a commanding voice in the
mix to speed up things. The doorknob rattled a bit, then turned and the door swung open. Agents Struthers and Mathews stood on the opposite side. Paul had his hand stretched out gallantly allowing ladies to go first. Ellie was having none of it. So they both stood unmoving.
“Oh for the love of… Move your asses in here. NOW!” “Yes, ma’am!” Paul stated as he launched himself into the office ahead of his partner and then came to rest uncomfortably in front of the commander.
Cole felt a certain vibe coming from the agents as they stood in front of her and realized that the foolishness of entering her office was not natural for an experienced military man or the bright young lady. She couldn’t tell what it was or why it had manifest itself in such a way, but Mountain Home was a small place and the CSC even smaller. Whatever was going on between these two didn’t bother her as long as they performed.
“Alex has asked for a face-to-face. As you know, Craig and Liz are away for the weekend, and you two are the only ones who are available,” Cole said.
Ellie and Paul looked at one another in surprise.
“Unless you’d rather continue with the more important duties you have been performing?”
“No, ma’am. I dare not speak for Agent Struthers here, but I had enough of locker room clean up in high school.”
“It means going back to the Rez. You two ready? I know you experienced a lot when you were last there. It would be okay if —”
“Yes, commander I’m ready,” Ellie stated firmly.
Cole nodded. “Good. Nothing like climbing back onto the horse that threw you. An osprey is warming up right now. See you tomorrow on your return.” She stood up from her chair.
Paul and Ellie snapped a sharp salute.
Cole smiled and held out her hand. “We aren’t strictly military around here, remember? We’re civilians. Saluting not required.”
Ellie took Cole’s outstretched hand and shook it followed by Paul, and they both turned and left the room.
GRACEFUL FEMININE FINGERS reached around Vladimir’s shoulders firmly gripping him as he finished. When she was confident he had had his fill, Stephanie stepped around from behind and pulled the body off his lap. She looked to the perimeter of the dark chamber, into the shadows, and nodded. Two figures emerged, grabbed the husk of the girl that lay at Vladimir’s feet like an empty dress, and dragged it back to where the others huddled waiting. It would now be their turn to feed on the “table scraps” that had been left. Stephanie turned her attention back to the master. Nuzzling her nose close into Vladimir’s neck, she proceeded to lick the blood that had spilled out of his mouth and down his throat. She made sure to do a thorough job, catching every drop before her tongue found his cheeks. Stephanie worked her mouth around Vladimir’s face as a lover would during foreplay, tasting the areas exposed to the air before she was allowed to swirl her tongue around his lips and then reach into his moist mouth; drinking in the last swallow of blood, which he held for her. The pleasure she felt at this moment reminded her of another life—one filled with sexual gratification as she used one man, then another, and another. But this wasn’t sex. Vampires didn’t have sex, not in the human understanding of the act. This was far more intimate and passionate. She had never felt so connected as she did when sharing another’s life-fluid with Vladimir.
««« ‡ »»» VLADIMIR SAT ON the ratty old armchair, eyes closed, allowing Stephanie to remove the residue of the sweet girl— sweet, as in taste. He had no idea as to what type of disposition she possessed. It was irrelevant at any rate. But what of all those tattoos and piercings? That was something he was going to have to get used to. It appeared the majority of the youth in this time found the need to color their skin with both agreeable and horrendous art; bad design made even worse, at times, by an unskilled tattooist hand. The ink may not have been aesthetically pleasing, but it didn’t block his access to her jugular, nor had it tainted the blood as it flowed out into his mouth. Some things he could excuse.
At this moment he felt contentment. A rare occurrence to be sure. But here he was, safe, surrounded by his clan, fawned over by a beautiful woman. What else should it be called? He was glad his decision to turn Stephanie quickly had been a good one. Instead of mak
ing her his familiar, or draining her outright, he had gambled she would be a good fit for his new family. And Stephanie had not proven his instincts wrong. If his judgment had gotten a bit rusty during his years in captivity, then he would have finished her and not had a further thought about it. But she had proven to be loyal and suited to an immortal’s life, adapting to every aspect of it with a wild abandon. Right at the moment, however, she was beginning to annoy him, and he brushed her away.
Vladimir opened his eyes and surveyed his new home. It had been many months of feasting since he and his small coterie left Seattle and worked their way south, never staying in one place for too long. His single-minded purpose was to increase his strength for the inescapable confrontation with Alexei. And the only way for the outcome to be favorable to him was to consume as much fresh human blood as he could. In reality, to achieve the level of dominance that would be needed to best his brother, Vladimir had been gorging on blood to the point where he almost found the red liquid disgusting. Well, unappealing. Almost.
Seattle had been fruitful. There was an overabundance of wealthy, naive youth with too much mommy and daddy money to make them cautious. All they had to do to entrap these terminally pampered kids, was suggest there might be some new, and possibly barrier-breaking drug on the market, or no-holdsbarred, after-hours club, or kinky sex party to attend. And like the Pied Piper of Hamelin, they would lead their willing prey to the nearest dark corner for a good bloodletting.
This country had changed so much since he had last trod its streets. Oh, he was aware of the metamorphosis from the popular media that flowed freely through the reservation. But it was a different matter when confronted with it up close. Did people have so much money they substituted what it could buy for actual child rearing? Was providing your child the newest car, the best technical gadgets, and the most expensive clothing the way to raise a human? Perhaps a tasty one, but he couldn’t drink all humans dry, though the thought was enticing. He felt he must be getting soft in his old age to be thinking of frivolous novelties, such as how humans raised their offspring. Microsoft and Amazon millionaires, you could take the whole lot and drain them. Just as long as a few of their gullible children were left behind for snacking on.
If one wasn’t too careful—and careful was not quite what they had been—the best way to get caught by vampire hunters was to languish in one place for too long. They had turned Seattle into a killing-field, so it was time for Vladimir and his merry band of immortals to pull up stakes and head to the one place he felt that he could call home. A place where they could be careful, blend in with the unseemly underworld, and cull the herd with more discretion than they had in the Emerald City. The smaller cities and towns along the Interstate Five corridor were just convenient rest stops on the way to his most favorite of hunting grounds: Portland.
Before his brother had forced the families to abide by that onesided treaty and move into the revolting reservation, Portland was a loud, boisterous, wide-open town. 1880s Portland had been rough around the edges, but was by far and away the best place he had ever lived providing a seemingly endless flow of blood; surpassing the likes of more sophisticated cities such as London, Paris, Rome, Moscow and New York. For that, he was willing to give up a few of the more refined things in life.
From the time of its founding, Portland may as well have been the ass-end of nowhere compared with the rest of the cities in America. To get there, one had to have the toughness of a mountain man, or the endurance of an immigrant crossing a continent. Or be willing to sail down one ocean and up almost the entire length of another and then travel up two rivers, seventy miles inland, to reach it.
Because of its isolation, Portland was known as a place to get lost in. To start over. To hide. Or to send your stupid child before he made yet another mistake to sully the family name. The local police were unscrupulous. Gambling and prostitution were unchecked. Mind diverting substances—such as alcohol and opium—were in abundance. And the raucous lumbermen, sailors, ranchers, and farmers with paychecks burning holes in their pockets were easy prey as they headed into the ‘wrong’ part of town in search of some release from the hard circumstances of their lives.
Men seemed to disappear on a nightly basis. Whether their knifed bodies had been dumped into the river, or they were ensnared by a crimp and sold to a ship’s captain needing crew. He may even have sprouted wings and flown away for all anyone knew. Anything seemed possible. Nothing was surprising, and few cared. With the table set in such a manner, whatever Vladimir and his followers did was masked by a reality that was commonplace. One more dead or missing person was tallied up to life as usual on the streets of Portland, Oregon. Not that Vladimir didn’t feel a tiny bit jealous the crimps, white slavers, card sharps, and whores were given far more credit for all the missing than they deserved. But he was still here while the likes of Bunco Kelly and his crony, Stingaree Poe—such colorful names—had long since rotted away in their graves. Given his immortality, he could overlook this minor slight.
Now though, he was back in what he liked to call, his “hometown.” He didn’t have any misconceptions this had remained the wild west town he loved. Old he might be, but ill-informed he wasn’t. He was aware Portland was going through a growth boom with new people streaming in on a monthly basis. Many of the new residents were young and restless souls looking for a place that understood them. They had read Portland opened its arms to those who identified as creative, weird, different, or just unemployed or unemployable. The building boom brought in a large number of itinerant construction workers and illegal aliens looking to fill service jobs. And, as in a lot of cities, there was a sizable and growing homeless population. The circumstances were different, but the net result was the same: there was a significant population of disconnected who wouldn’t be missed right away, if at all. A flock of sheep ripe for the slaughter.
This chamber Vladimir had established as his refuge was in was dank and dark. The porous brick walls did nothing to keep out the moisture that saturated the ground around its location so near the river. And the fact that this chamber was under the streets of the city made it damper than what one might imagine for it being relatively dry at this time of year. It was connected to a network of passageways he had been familiar with the last time he was in residence in this city. Out of sight of what law that existed, the tunnels served as convenient locations for anything benefiting being hidden from the bright light of day.
As the city grew, so too had the web of shafts. By the end of World War II, the rough and tumble world the tunnels had hidden from view began to disappear as post-war prosperity arrived and old buildings were razed to make way for highways and parking lots. Knowing the tunnels represented a lurid past the city fathers wanted to sweep under the carpet, the government made it an unwritten policy to erase evidence of its seedier past when opium dens, gambling joints, and speakeasies existed comfortably next to—actually below—churches, schools, and confectionery shops. Municipal street crews were instructed to fill in any below-grade voids located during maintenance and repairs. As new buildings replaced old, robust concrete foundations blocked off passage connections turning what was once a pedestrian subway, with access to almost any location on the west side of the river, into a maze of dead-end tunnels few people knew how to navigate through.
Historians have had an on-going debate about the existence of the “Portland Underground.” In recent years it had become a popular marketing ploy, acknowledging a history that had been actively white-washed, and asserting the city’s unique place in the world. Come to Portland, home of craft beer, bicycles, donuts, and Shanghai tunnels. The debate usually acknowledged the existence of some tunnels used for commerce. But the doubters questioned they had been suborned into an outright network used by crimps, drug dealers, and white slavers. And there were the pure disbelievers who universally regarded the notion of any tunnels existing below the surface of the city and saw them strictly as the work of myth, legend and speculative fict
ion.
Vladimir sat slumped in the ratty Victorian armchair surveying the chamber, the last of his lairs. When Alexei made the ill-fated agreement with Roosevelt and sent out the call to come to him, Vladimir believed he might never again set foot in these subterranean passages. Fearing his brother had signed away too many vampire rights, he went on a week-long bender and drank as much of this town’s life-blood as he could hold. The hangover was epic, surpassing even those of his first year of immortality when he had no reign on his addiction and no gauge to his limits. These tunnels had served him well, providing protection from the killing light of day and allowing him to negotiate the city at will.
His musings were interrupted by the sound of quiet sobbing emanating from the darkest of the shadowed corners of the lair. Vladimir stood and approached the source. Huddled on the floor was another girl. Her hands were firmly grasping a stocking cap, pulling the knit hat down as far as she could over her head and face, trying vainly to hide. Vladimir bent over and offered her a hand.
“Please, stand, Annie,” he said in a voice that seemed to tranquilize the girl.
He gently pulled the frightened girl out of the shadowy perimeter of the chamber and into the warm light of the oil lanterns hanging from the ceiling.
“I am Vladimir. Join me,” he said smiling, ushering her to the armchair. His throne.
Vladimir sat first then urged her to sit on his lap.
“I do not wish to hurt you,” he whispered into her ear as he stroked her neck. “Just relax.” He bent towards her exposed throat and opened his mouth.
“THIS SURE BEATS another wasted night in that sterile control room.” Paul threw out to the only person who was sitting near to him.
Ellie kept her eyes glued to the laptop on her knees.
“I said . . .,” Paul raised his voice to be heard over the drone of the propellers. “SURE BEATS CONTROL ROOM DETAIL.”