Blood City: Book Two Of The Monster Keeper Series

by Jeff Seats

  “I’m no IT guy,” Paul said, at a loss as to what to do. “Haven’t the slightest…”

  Then the black abruptly was replaced with a frozen image of an out-of-focus face.

  A moment passed, and then the head began to move. Its facial features remained blurred and became grossly distorted as it shifted closer to the camera lens—first showing a big fuzzy eyeball then an oversized nose, making the whole thing appear to be a student’s avant-garde video art project.

  Then some background sound could be heard through the speaker. A nervous cough. A shifting chair. And then a whispered voice.

  “Master, you’re too close to the camera.”

  The blurred face turned away from the screen and asked, “What?”

  “You are too close to the camera lens. That round thing at the top of the monitor. See that inset image of you at the bottom.”

  Blurred eyes glanced down at the bottom of his screen, “Oh!” The face became more defined as it settled into the appropriate spot and then came into complete focus. A handsome man in his late twenties with pale white skin, strawberry blond hair, and pupils of onyx was intently looking into the camera. He smiled.

  ««« ‡ »»» SIMULTANEOUSLY, ELLIE AND Paul turned to each other. The last time they had seen that face—now smiling at them from every computer monitor in the control room—was on the night when they walked into that little town. At first, it appeared to be a Godsend. It ended up being a portal to perdition, no divinity in sight.

  And now they were looking at the face neither wanted to see again, digitally or not. Vladimir Rurik.

  “I apologize for my lack of understanding of this technology.” Vladimir smiled. “After all, I was born before the discovery of electricity.” He made a deliberate show of composing himself. “Though I do not understand such things, I am told I am livestreamed to you via a cloud server. No chance for editing. All my flaws laid out before you,” he smiled.

  “H-o-l-y-s-h-i-t!” Paul slowly croaked out in a throaty whisper.

  Vladimir looked off camera to the unseen voice. “You’re doing great master. Perfect!”

  Vladimir smiled again.

  “I desire to send your country a message. I would be most appreciative if you were to pass it along to your leaders.” Vladimir paused. He adjusted himself so his body was fully centered within the frame of the screen, then continued in a coldly sober intonation.

  “Your way of life will not come to an end because of the impoverished immigrants streaming across your borders seeking a better life for their children. Islamic radicalism will not do it either. A war on drugs? Same-sex marriage? These are distractions your leaders use to blind you from seeing the real threat —the undeniable menace that can and will topple your civilization.”

  Vladimir took a dramatic pause. Then stared right into the camera, apparently now more than comfortable with the technology.

  “I, Vladimir Rurik, am that threat.” Again he paused to let that sink in.

  “I make you humans a simple offer. You desist from hunting my people and me. Allow us to live as nature intended, or you will see exactly how your world can come crashing down on you.”

  Vladimir nodded to the unseen person off camera, and the screen turned crimson red. He continued his speech over a quick succession of images: a pile of Tutsi bodies butchered with machetes by Hutu tribesmen, CIA operatives attaching electrodes to the gentiles of prisoners, row upon row of Jews slowly filing into a gas chamber, a Serbian nationalist beating in the head of a Muslim woman with a hammer. The screen flashed a bright white then grew into the image of a mushroom cloud roiling into the sky, dissolving to a photo of a little girl—a burn survivor from Nagasaki.

  “For centuries immortals have been hunted because of the untold horrors we have supposedly inflicted upon your kind. Ha! The irony is immortals have been responsible for the deaths of an infinitesimal number of humans compared with how many have been slaughtered by humanity’s own hands! Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, Idi Amin. Death on an industrial scale. And you are afraid of us?”

  The string of bloody images stopped, and Vladimir’s face reappeared.

  “I have been inspired by the recruiting videos ISIS has created and posted online. But we have added our unique twist that should get our point across to viewers, more effectively I think,” Vladimir nodded again.

  A new series of images flashed on the screen, this time showing vampires feasting on humans—messy pictures of gore pouring from ripped throats, heads being torn off by rampaging vampires, ghastly mounds of bloody internal organs, and hopeless humans screaming in pain and fear.

  Vladimir’s face reappeared, and he let out a laugh, “I do believe that we might even scare those ISIS pretenders.”

  After a pause he solemnly continued, “You cannot stop me. Not this time. Your best hope is to agree to my conditions. I demand a new treaty between humans and vampires. And I alone will set the terms.”

  Vladimir folded his hands on the tabletop in front of him.

  “My proposal is quite reasonable. You have one of two paths to choose from. The first leaves your world relatively unharmed. You will provide an uninterrupted supply of humans to feed my people. As simple as that. I’ll even allow you to select who will be sent to us.” His demeanor had become magnanimous as though he was offering a huge gift. “Your choice for whatever the reason or criteria. We aren’t as selective as you are.” He smiled at his own little joke.

  “This avenue leaves you humans free to live your lives, chart your affairs, make war, build cities, go to the moon, raise families—whatever you want. Of course, as my family grows, so too the number of humans provided will need to be increased to sustain our needs. Think of it as a way of controlling your burgeoning population.” Vladimir grinned.

  “Or take the alternate path.” His face solidified and became dark and fierce. “Humans will be enslaved, kept like cattle. Your only purpose will be as food on the hoof. The earth as you know it will cease to exist.”

  He stopped as if putting an exclamation mark on the last statement.

  “You do not have to decide today, tomorrow, or next week. But choose you must. We have time—centuries in fact. Immortality has a way of helping one to ‘play the long game,’ as you say. However, the practicalities of negotiating this agreement throughout the years with such fragile beings necessitate a speedier response. So alas, I must insist upon your decision within one month.”

  “Until then, you will immediately stop your search for me. This is not negotiable. By so doing I can promise a reasonable approach to our hunts—no children, for instance. No berserker bloodsuckers running through the streets.

  “Bring your agents home and tend to the lycans, mutants, and the other misfits you call monsters. If you refuse to call off your dogs I will inundate the internet with the images I just showed you. Every single person in this country will learn exactly what fear looks like. I wonder how many ‘likes’ I will get.”

  Vladimir stared into the camera with malevolent intensity, a wicked smile broke across his face, his image winked out, and the screen went blank.

  ««« ‡ »»» COMMANDER COLE STOOD in her office looking through the window and down into the control room. Vlad’s eyes seemed to be drilling directly into hers with an energy she wouldn’t be able to resist if he was standing in the same room. When her computer monitor went black, she thought it might be a glitch in the system and stood up to see if the control room had been affected by the same thing. When she opened the blinds, she found herself looking at Vlad’s malicious face just coming into focus. His visage was not just looming from the big screen but looking up at her from every monitor in the room. The effect was unnerving.

  Her knuckles went white as she gripped the sill of the window, steadying herself while Vlad outlined the ground rules for HIS new world order.

  She had always felt that should anything or anyone try to upset the tenuous balance between the CSC and the vampires he would be at the heart of it. Hi
s discontent with the treaty and confinement to the reservation was more than evident while she’d been assigned there—always taunting her, toying with her as a cat would with a mouse before chomping the life out of its frail body. If it weren’t for how vampires functioned on an instinctual level as pack animals submitting to the will of the strongest among them, Vlad would have laughed in his brother’s face when he and Teddy Roosevelt struck their deal. Fortunately for all, Alexei was not only the most formidable of the immortals. He had wisely recognized the vampire race was successfully being hunted to extinction. Without such a treaty both he and Vlad, as well as their whole species, might have been staked to the ground and decapitated long ago.

  But here was Vlad, in all his sanctimonious glory, threatening the very existence of humanity; smugly self-assured that he was safely hidden and unable to be unearthed.

  Vlad had just declared war on humanity, and while Cole knew it was a war humans could win, it was indeed a war no one would want. However, she also knew humans had instinctual behaviors too. Chief of which was an instinct for survival and when push came to shove, humans would not relent. If war was what he wanted, then war he would get.

  CRAIG CHECKED HIS watch again. Anything to take his mind off the visit with his mother. Of course, they loved each other, but speaking with her in person gave him no possible excuses to cut the conversation short and escape like he could with a phone call. So full button-pushing mode had gone into effect with enough time for her to let out several of her classic lines. Emotional misery was its end result.

  He hated having to lie to his mother about his job. He hated even more, his lack of creativity when it came to inventing a believable enough lie that she would accept. I’m an aide to a U.S. senator. Enough said. But now—now he had the ominous feeling he was the next one to have a fallen warrior memorial sitting in his locker and he desired to tell her everything so when the time came she could at least find solace in the fact he died serving his country. Of course, Liz used the I work for the F.B.I. line like the others almost always did. At least Saunders—Benji— actually had been an agent for the Bureau.

  In all honesty, however, he did not like how their relationship had evolved. Her role as “mother” and his as “son”—forever imprinted in her mind as her little boy. If she knew what he did for a living she’d probably ask him before he went out on a hunt if he had on a stain resistant jacket. “You know how hard it is to get blood out of clothing?”

  He squeezed the rosary in his coat pocket. Mother’s intuition? Did she sense this might be the last time they saw one another? Was she so aware of things she would deliberately give him a tool that might help save his life and a silver one to boot?

  Now, finally in the air, he rechecked his watch making sure they would be on time for the meeting. Liz was sitting next to him engrossed in a magazine she picked up at the Eugene airport, leaving him to his thoughts. And the only ones he could muster up were those of work or his mother, and he had enough of thinking about her to fill him for a while.

  It had taken Craig the better part of the past ten months since the Vamp Town incident to convince commander Cole and her superiors that bringing Alex into the CSC was not only a smart thing to do, but the only thing to do. How they couldn’t see the logic was baffling to him, and the longer they took to come to the only reasonable decision the further underground Vlad would burrow and the more time he had to repopulate the vampire race.

  Craig was certain Vlad would not be content with living out his existence hiding and lurking in the shadows. He was convinced Vlad was preparing to pay back humanity for the injustice he believed was done to him. Craig knew that Alex understood this about his brother as well, albeit not soon enough.

  Craig neurotically checked his watch one more time. The lack of direct flights between Eugene and Boise—lack, as in none— gave him extra time to reconsider his arguments for Alex joining the CSC. It was a little maddening they had first to fly north to Portland, and then east to Boise, as opposed to the quicker, more logical straight-line route looking at any map would suggest.

  First, Alex had the intimate knowledge of how his brother operated: how he hunted, where his possible hideouts were, and most important his potential weaknesses.

  Second, Alex was still in control of the vast majority of the remaining vamps. But his grip was tenuous, with one or two slipping out every week into the general human population ever since the incident.

  Third, there was no denying that a policy of locking up vampires for all eternity may not have been realistic. Even Alex had expressed discontent with how his life was playing out. Without engaging him in some real way to challenge his mind, there was the actual possibility he too would call it quits. The gates to hell would then be opened and who knew what carnage hundreds of hungry vamps set loose on the world could do? And while the number of vamps was nothing compared to the overwhelming size of the earth’s population, the question remained: How long would it take to turn mere blood donors into an army of vampires?

  Liz closed the magazine and held it in her lap. “This meeting, what do you think it’s about?”

  Craig shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know. Maybe it’s about Alex and his request.” Or maybe it’s about why I let Vlad escape.

  “You still think that there’s a chance they’ll let a vampire into the agency that keeps them in check?”

  He frowned. “No, honestly. It has been too long, and I know Alex is getting anxious. You heard him. Even he has gotten tired of being confined to Vamp Town.”

  “Whatever the meeting is about, it’s been on the calendar for weeks. Long enough for you to have that touching family moment with your mother.”

  Craig looked into Liz’s eyes. “You know what I’d say to Saunders if he said that?”

  “Let me guess: Fuck you!” She said with a smile and opened up her magazine.

  Craig tried to resist the feelings pushing their way into his empty shell of a heart. Aside from the generally accepted idea that dating one’s partner was a professional no-no, there was the practical side to consider. He was 49 years old. Liz, barely thirty. At least his former partner, Kathrine, had been closer in age, but then he had allowed the excuse of professionalism to get in the way as well. It just seemed easier to keep his feelings to himself —that is, up to the very moment he pulled the trigger, ending her life before she could transition into a vampire.

  Even after Kathrine’s death, he kept those feelings under wraps, ashamed he had never told her, sad he never gave her the opportunity to reject or accept him. Now with Liz, he felt like he could be facing the same scenario. And the idea that maybe he might have to kill her one day as well was too much to contemplate. A shiver ran down his spine as though the hand of the reaper was resting on his shoulder.

  Juggling all his anxieties had drained Craig. He was exhausted. He adjusted the seat back to recline and closed his eyes. Breathe in. Breathe out. Breathe in. Sleep overtook him, hitting the pause button on the playback of his visit with mom, the loss of Kathrine, the fear of losing Liz, and his own mortality.

  ««« ‡ »»» LIZ LOOKED OVER at Craig. He was dead asleep. She doubted even a crash landing could have awakened him. He had gotten himself all wound up about seeing his mother, which had to be exhausting enough, but she could tell there was more going on he was not revealing. She was reasonably sure he hadn’t been sleeping all that much since Vlad had gone to ground. And the loss of his best friend probably didn’t help much either. What Craig needed was long uninterrupted periods of relaxing sleep. In all likelihood, what he really needed was a different job. As if that would ever happen.

  She fished her phone out of her coat. They had been boarding the plane at Mahlon Sweet Field in Eugene when it vibrated and then she heard the buzz and the follow-up notification, but she had been unable to look at it as they crammed themselves into the narrow rows and tiny seats. Even small for her frame. The airlines kept trying to figure out how to squeeze in more passengers per fligh
t. The assholes. She thought.

  The aggravation of boarding the plane had distracted Liz from checking to see who had tried to contact her. Now that she was settled, she saw Ellie had sent her a text.

  Think we found V :)

  This got her attention, and she mentally kicked herself for not looking at it when the message had first been received. She briefly thought about waking Craig, but saw he might actually be sound asleep, and let the idea pass. Plenty of time to tell him after he woke up.

  Now, more than for comfort’s sake, Liz wished there was enough need for a direct flight between Eugene and Boise. But both cities were not large enough markets, so they had to fly through a hub city to get to any other destination. At least they got the flight connecting through Portland and not Seattle.

  Looking back at Craig she was happy she hadn’t bothered him. Calmness seemed to have finally descended over him smoothing out his face and, if not for the stubble of beard, she could see the cute little boy he once was.

  She studied his features. He was a young-looking 49. She had thought about him and her as an item, briefly. But the age difference between them was a barrier, at least for her, and him too she supposed, since he had never made any moves to suggest otherwise.

  But Liz knew he was attracted to her the first time he’d seen her in the lecture hall where, as a newbie, she was invested with the knowledge of the CSC and its mission to keep the humans safe from the world’s monsters. Craig did not have a good poker face—she could tell by the way he got flustered and tongue-tied the moment they had first locked eyes, surrounded by the other recruits and agents. Even the act of not answering her questions signaled his attraction. It seemed cute at the time.

  Craig shifted in his sleep, smashing his face up against the window. Well, so much for the angelic face, she thought. But even in its distorted appearance the kid she had seen in all those photos at his mother’s house was still there: his baptism, first communion, as a boy scout in full uniform—merit badge sash loaded with colorfully embroidered disks of achievement—his brothers. It was odd to her how he seemed almost embarrassed by his family; at least his lack of talking about them gave that appearance. But his mother was a lovely lady. Liz couldn’t see why he got so worked up about visiting her.