by Jeff Seats
The room went quiet. Now all eyes were for sure trained on Craig but at least everyone had quieted down.
“Thank you, Agent Wright,” Commander Cole said with a wry tone.
Everyone broke into laughter cutting through the nervous tension that had permeated the room.
Cole addressed the unit. “Vampires are immortal blood eaters. From the beginning, we relied too heavily on their instinctual pack animal behavior to ensure compliance with the treaty. We were naïve in thinking Alex would be Khan forever and we didn’t need to do much more to keep them in control. So we focused our limited resources on the others that required more hands-on attention.
“We have become a weak reactionary force, only responding when something bad happens. And until the Vamp Town incident, that had not occurred with the reservation vamps, ever.
“With Vlad defying his brother’s authority, issuing threats that are tantamount to war, it’s time to become more pro-active. And contrary to what I have said, before this is all over, we just may need to realign with the religions of the world, our former allies in this age-old struggle.”
“And the treaty?” Asked Liz.
“I’m afraid that that may have been an instrument of another time, long since gone.”
Craig stood, “This whole thing is way bigger than how many bodies we can throw at Vlad. The hatred we all saw in his eyes spoke to his contempt for humans. Maybe it’s our fault by making him feel like he was a kept prisoner. I don’t know. Maybe, if he had remained a human, he might have ended up as a psychotic murderer. Who knows? The fact is, we just watched him declare open season on humans. Either we do everything we can do to crush him now, or we go along with his demands and become his dairy herd and milked dry of our blood.
“Call the Pope? Hell yeah. Because this affects all people: Catholic, Muslim, Jew, Atheist. But that is for the long term. We need to take Vlad on today!” Craig paused a moment, all eyes glued to the crazy man as he ranted. He cleared his throat. In for a penny in for a pound. “Commander, I think now is the best time to reconsider bringing Alex in to help us—”
“What?” Terry said almost spitting out his coffee. “Alexei Rurik, a vampire, a member of the CSC?”
Cole turned to Terry. “You can relax JR. Already ran that idea up the yardarm and I almost was hung off it. Not that I disagree with Craig about the urgency we face in dealing with Vlad.”
“The Director didn’t know about Vlad’s threat when you last asked.” Liz inserted. “Maybe this video will change his mind. Alex has been dealing with Vlad for over a hundred years.”
“Yeah,” Craig said, “That has got to have some value.”
Terry sat back in his chair. “Yeah, his insider knowledge was very useful when Vlad challenged him for superiority. And won.”
Craig shot Terry an evil eye for what he felt was a cheap shot.
Cole took the stack of papers in front of her, picked them up and straightened them in a tamping action signifying an end of the discussion. “Sorry, you two,” She said to Craig and Liz. Not going to happen. The topic is closed.”
Craig sat silenced.
“Ma’am?” Paul spoke hesitantly.
“Yes?”
“My impression . . . Our understanding—” Paul looked to Ellie who nodded knowing what he was about to say. “—when we saw him in Vamp Town . . . he uh . . .,” Paul stuttered as he realized that he hadn’t told Cole this in their after-action report upon returning from their visit the other day. “Alex pretty much told us he was going to leave the Rez and find his brother. This is with or without our organization.” After a pause, “At least that’s how I understood his comments.” Then he looked to Ellie for support.
“Right!” Ellie coughed out in agreement.
Commander Cole stared at the two new agents. “And this is the first I have heard this? When the dust settles I think we shall discuss how to present information thoroughly for a debriefing. Just the three of us. Yes?”
“Yes, ma’am!” The two embarrassed agents blurted out.
Cole resumed addressing the entire group. “Alex remaining on the reservation is not our current concern. If he helps in stopping or eliminating Vlad, then great. But know this. If Alex gets in our way we will hunt him too.” She smiled with determination. “Now, as for taking the fight to Vlad, Agent Struthers has pieced together his movements.” Cole looked down the table to Ellie. “Please continue.”
“Thank you, ma’am.” Ellie opened a folder and looked down at her notes. “Paul . . . that is, Agent Mathews and I have been searching the internet for stories that might point to Vlad’s location. And we stumbled across a series of articles from a weekly out of Seattle. A reporter has been following a series of bizarre murders. The main news sources are calling it a potential serial killer. All the victims are found with throat injuries, bites or worse, with most of their blood missing. That is, what blood that wasn’t spewed out and around the crime scene. At any rate, the amount of blood present never amounts to the amount of blood in a human body.”
“That sounds like a vamp to me,” Craig said. “So we go to Seattle and—”
“Not in Seattle anymore.” Paul interrupted. “The reporter for this paper seems to have a jones for this story. He has followed the killings as they started in North Seattle around the U district, down into the skid road area around Pike place and the ballparks, south to the industrial area and Boeing field and on into Tacoma, and Olympia following I5. Murders were also reported in Centralia, Chehalis, and a couple other small towns then the killings seemed to stop. “
Cole asked, “When was his last article written?”
Ellie flipped through the clippings in her file, “Oh.” She held up one. “This last week.”
“Portland . . ..” Terry said staring off into space.
What did you say JR?” Cole asked.
“Portland. Vlad’s going to Portland.”
“Yeah and then Salem and Eugene,” Craig added enthusiastically.
“No. Portland is sort of a favorite hunting ground for him. The closest that he called home amongst the many that he has had.”
“And how do you know this? I mean for certain?” Craig asked incredulously.
“Vamp Town was my assignment when I worked here after Nam. I got to know both Alex and Vlad pretty well, but I think Vlad took a shine to me because of my recent war experience. All the killing he thought I did. Our main topic of conversation. I’d tell him about some poor VC I watched buy it and he’d pull a story of his own out to share and compare.”
Liz gave Terry a disapproving look shaking her head. “That sick mother—”
“Language Adams,” Cole said as she gave Craig a stern glare.
“What? What did I do?” Craig asked with mock innocence knowing full well that he had the rep of being the resident potty mouth and was being accused of influencing his partner.
“I guess the lack of killing his own food kind of was getting to him. Anyway, I learned a few things and Portland was a favorite location for him.”
“And why Portland Master Sergeant?” Paul was interested.
“You can call me JR, or Jackie. Terry works too. I’m retired from that other title.” He smiled at everyone. “Back before the treaty was signed by Alex and Roosevelt, Portland was Vlad’s last playground. The town was known as a wide-open city considered the ass end of the country where people came to disappear from their troubles back east. Portland also became the spot where sea captains came to fill out their labor needs. Ever hear of the term being Shanghaied?”
Some nodded understanding, but Liz and Ellie both shook their heads.
“Well, it was a criminal way of getting a few needed bodies for your ship. You’d contact a local crimp who would, for a price, find you just the man you needed. What all this meant was that people went missing all the time. And they were usually alone with no one to notice what happened to them. Not all the missing wound up on the high seas.”
“Vlad.” Liz real
ized.
“Yep. He feasted and gathered family members. He’d never had it so good. Then, well, then his brother signed the treaty and ordered all the remaining vampires to assemble for protective internment. Pissed Vlad off but he could not fight the strength of his brother’s will. Until now.”
“And Portland is again ripe for harvest. Street kids, homeless, young creatives wandering the streets drunk at night,” Paul said.
“A target rich environment.” Craig agreed.
“A perfect place to hide and strengthen up for whatever lies ahead,” Cole said with authority. “Liz, JR and Craig, you three will head there in the morning. Sorry but you know I can’t spare any other bodies at this time.”
Craig stood with purpose. “I guess we better get packing.” THE REPORTER LOOKED down the dark street behind him. The noise he thought he heard must have been a cat or even one of those big, fat Norwegian rats that seemed to infest any waterfront. A chill ran down his spine as he pictured one of those filthy rodents. Quickly he turned back to the woman he had been following. He spotted her taking a right turn around a corner up ahead and picked up his pace not wanting to lose her. It had taken him months to track her down, not her exactly but he had followed activity he believed that she had a hand in from Seattle, down the interstate, from one community to the next always a step behind the perpetrators but consistently in time to see the aftermath of their “visit.”
His quest had started months earlier following a lead regarding university students being found dead and drained of blood. The police had no clues and no motive. But those first two coeds were just the precursor to the many other murders that quickly followed. For the most part, the deaths adhered to the same pattern of bodies left in back alleys, assaults occurring at night. The only marks on their bodies were the curious puncture wounds in their necks. Blood drained dry. Well, dry was just a figure of speech. Other bodily fluids remained; the after death seepage that happens (before or after or during the onset of rigor mortis) was evidence of that. The strangeness of only the blood having been removed from the body elicited speculation of a supernatural occurrence, or even alien abduction, or diabolical testing. The surgical cleanness of the wounds, two holes neatly located over the jugular, did indicate that whomever, whatever caused these deaths had an ability to precisely tap into an artery and quickly remove the life force from the victim.
But that didn’t explain the other deaths. Messy affairs, throats savagely torn apart, heads almost removed by the violent nature of the attack. In these instances, the blood of the victims was also removed but not “drained dry” as in the other murders. Not that blood wasn’t the objective; it was just that this killer appeared to rush his way through the job trying to get at the red prize as quickly as possible. Tear open the main artery between the heart and the brain and let the heart pump it out. Effective but, extremely untidy as though the perp had been raised without any sense of “table manners.”
The reporter always had to squash down those types of speculative ideas. His editor harbored no desire to even hint at the idea that these deaths had anything to do with blood consumption. So he kept them to himself until he could prove something more substantive. He could write about the bizarre nature of the deaths, the missing blood, even speculate about alien abductions or ritualistic ceremonies. But blood consumption—off limits. Of course, if the victim’s blood was being consumed, then only one strong possibility existed as to whom the consumers might be.
A chill ran down his back. Even he chose not to say that word out loud. The very thought that he was on the trail of vampires made it hard for him to fall asleep at night. He grinned thinking about the garlic he kept in his hotel room and of the “made in China” plastic crucifixes he had bought the other day. He knew that vampires were a construct of uneducated peasants and amplified over the years by popular fiction. No, whoever was doing this was just a sick mother fucker. Sicker if he did drink the blood but sick and human nevertheless. But it never hurt to be prepared. The Boy Scout motto.
Even so, there had not been any indication of where the missing blood was or for what it could have been used. That was the mystery, and an obvious answer was what the authorities seemed to be closing their eyes to, either deliberately or merely out of the notion that the actual truth would be too much to believe. A truth that he acknowledged was hard to accept, even after all he had learned.
So, he reviewed what was known to this point: two methods of extracting blood; one brutal and messy, the other neat and tidy—one perpetrator or two?—working together or alone? It would be highly coincidental for two different killers to be operating simultaneously in the same locations. No, there were two, or more, killers working together. But why?
He stopped. There was that noise coming from behind again. This time when he turned to look he saw the faintest of shadows —dissolve? He squinted his eyes to try to see better, but there was nothing, not even the cliché cat running out from behind the trash cans. Fuck! Why did I follow this story again? He returned to the task at hand and watched the woman slip into a door in the back wall of an old brick building that formed one boundary of the parking lot which he was standing in. At least Portland, unlike Seattle, had done away with alleys years earlier which made him feel less likely to having been lured into a trap.
But he looked around the deserted parking lot one more time to be certain. Mercury-vapor security lighting shed a harsh white-blue glare across the asphalt and the few cars that were parked. The bright illumination produced a sharp contrast between lit objects and cast shadows. The stark difference made it even harder to see into the dark areas and identify any signs of trouble. Seeing none, he returned his attention to the heavy metal door which stood partially open, dim light seeping out just enough to serve as an invitation for him to continue the pursuit. He stopped just before entering when he noticed some Chinese script along the side of the opening. He had no idea if it was Cantonese or Mandarin, or some other variant on the language, but he could tell that it had been painted there quite some time ago.
Slowly he pushed on the door listening for it to make a sound signaling his entry but it swung open as though the hinges had recently been oiled. Again he paused to listen for sounds coming from the interior. There. Footfalls on wooden steps, heading down. A green glow of light from an exit sign above another door pointed the way and down he went.
Echoing footsteps kept drawing him down the stairs. At the bottom was a profoundly dark void that the green glow of the exit sign above his head could not penetrate. The reporter leaned into the black emptiness and let his eyes relax, trying to see the slightest outline of something. He held out his arm as a blind person might do when entering a new environment and swept it left then right then—bump—his hand touched a rough wood surface. It was a large crate which he felt his way around and then slid his foot forward, slowly inching it along the surface of the floor, probing for more obstacles he might trip over. Then a faint light switched on, a previously hidden archway glowed in front of him, beckoning him forward—another breadcrumb to follow.
For a brief moment, he considered using the flashlight on his cell phone to speed up his progress but discarded that idea. You can’t follow someone surreptitiously by advertising that you were behind them. Patiently he continued his snail’s pace across the floor arriving at the arch. Then a creaking of rusted hinges came from below him and light washed up another set of stairs. He could hear footsteps faintly echoing off of some hard surface as they receded, taunting him to follow. The open door provided enough illumination to negotiate the steps heading down as he collected more crumbs.
Somewhere along the line he should have been thinking how this woman might be leading him on. Surely she had been toying with him, leaving the clues that allowed him to “barely” keep up with her. It was all a little too convenient that a light would come on just when it seemed that he had lost her trail but the reporter had his curiosity set to high pitch and caution was buried by his overwhelming
desire to discover more.
At the bottom of the stairs, he entered an unevenly light space. A quick visual scan showed this basement level was completely empty except for the forest of regularly spaced tree trunks growing out of the concrete floor that served as columns for the structure overhead. Calling the large posts “tree trunks” was not an exaggeration. In the 1890s, in both Seattle and Portland, old growth Douglas fir trees were almost literally within spitting distance of everyone’s back door. That overstatement aside, their natural size and strength made them the no brains choice for large-scale construction and were used both for pillars and beams, as with this six-story brick building rising above him. Despite the wooden structure, this type of building would never be destroyed by fire—these timbers could survive the hottest of blazes and still be structurally sound—but an earthquake would send the exterior masonry walls down into a pile of rubble in a manner of minutes.
Stacked around him were more crates and boxes, piles of old office furniture parts, office dividers, retail displays, file cabinets, and other odd remainders of once useful in the world of commerce. He kept looking around, but couldn’t make out any one obvious path for the woman to have taken. He had reached a dead end. Then he heard a tapping. A sharp/hard tap like the sound of a ring being deliberately banged against a hard surface. He snapped his head to the sound and there she was. Standing in the opening of yet another door. She stood leaning against the frame, one arm extended high towards the header as though she were patiently waiting. A finger on her hand that was touching the frame above her head moved and the ring on that finger tapped the frame once again.
Tap. Tap. Tap.
The woman he had been following (or had she been leading him) was standing under a bare light bulb clinging to a piece of conduit above her head. For the first time, he was able to get a good look at her. WOW! She was a dark-haired beauty. Her perfect figure was silhouetted by another light inside the space beyond the open doorway she had paused in; highlighting all the appropriate curves. She was looking right at him, no longer pretending she didn’t know she was being followed. Her eyes invited him forward. To keep following. And he obeyed.