Blood City: Book Two Of The Monster Keeper Series

by Jeff Seats

  Naomi inhaled the master’s life force, swallowed and drank more. She was connected with Vladimir, her blood-father, in ways she never thought possible. When he tried to pull his arm away, Naomi would not release her mouth from the cut. She drank and drank. He had to pry her mouth off his skin. This sent Naomi into a spin of rejection and disappointment. But as she was about to wail in despair, Stephanie offered her bleeding wrist to continue the transformation. “There now my daughter. You are one of us, but you must not take in too much at first.” Naomi slowed her consumption. She felt the soft hand of her blood-mother combing through her hair while gently suckling her newborn.

  As Stephanie pulled her bleeding wrist away, Naomi remained standing, lost in between the last vestiges of humanity and the immortal life that awaited. She felt sated, blood-thirst quenched, for the moment. Then the foggy reality she had experienced all her life began to fade away, and the world around her came into a sharp focus, the cataracts of humanity having been stripped away. Naomi now saw the underground chamber they were in through eyes with enhanced vision. Everything she looked at was clearer, more defined. The dark, shadowy corners popped to life as she now could see every brick, every line of mortar.

  Next, she became keenly aware of the slow, incessant dripping that had been nothing more than background noise coming from somewhere hidden in the shadows. Naomi now could pinpoint its location and was able to watch the drip, in slow motion, as it seeped out of a crack in the ceiling, track it to where it let go of the brick, and follow its free-fall to a spot on the floor where it smacked the hard surface, exploding into a spray of smaller drops. Zooming in on a specific droplet she found that she could see into it, entering it, like on a science website that disassembled things on a macro level, observing the spores of whatever swimming about inside. As if the drop was an airborne aquarium, flying through with other aquariums raining down onto the dirty concrete floor.

  And then she viewed the whole cycle in reverse—tracked the drip up from the floor, across the brick ceiling, up through the crack, into the dirt above, around sewer pipes and fiber optic lines, up through a layer of cobblestone covered by asphalt into another crack at the bottom of a puddle, against a curb beneath the night sky whose stars were obscured by the lights of the city.

  Naomi became lightheaded. She was losing her equilibrium and started to become dizzy. Her knees went loose, legs buckled. She felt Stephanie holding her, guiding her to Vladimir’s chair, his throne, and was gently lowered into it. Her eyes remained closed, afraid of other disorienting reactions as a result of the transition. Amazing isn’t it? She felt Vladimir inside her head again.

  Then the image of the little birthday girl in the pink dress came into her head. The focus shifted from the dress to the man to her left. Uncle Jack. “Your uncle. J. R. Terry. He is in town? Have you talked to him?”

  “No, not yet.” Naomi’s answer was not verbal, but she heard herself respond.

  “Send our uncle one of those word messages. “

  “Text, you mean.”

  “Yes, yes, send him a text, and invite him to meet you tomorrow night.”

  Total control of her own movements began to return to Naomi. She picked up her phone and typed.

  “Good. Your uncle is a hunter. He hunts me and all like me—including you. You will assist me in putting an end to this hunter. “

  “Yes, my master.”

  THE VIBRATION COMING from his pocket was starting to annoy him. He had turned the afternoon outing, reconnecting with his former home, into an exploration of the old town area where Vlad used to roam oh so many years ago. To say that even an eighth of the buildings still existed from the late nineteenth century would be an exaggeration. Heck, when he was a kid, he didn’t even know the working wharf area of the 1890’s, had ever existed along this stretch of the river now known as Tom McCall Park. He remembered this part of the city as a highway, Harbor Drive. He shook his head trying to conjure up all the buildings where Vlad’s haunting grounds had once been.

  That turn of phrase made him smile. ‘Haunting grounds’ instead of ‘hunting grounds.’ He had to have been the first one to coin it. At least he’d never heard it before. Well, maybe he had, but he was going to claim it anyway. The point was, he was as unfamiliar with this part of town as Vlad had to be. A further consideration was that entrances to any type of tunnel system that may have existed back in the bad old days of Portland had to be very few, given how many buildings had been torn down under the guise of progress. Terry knew the underground had been Vlad’s personal Shangri-La, and his gut told him if Vlad were in Portland right now he would be lurking below the streets someplace, regardless, at this very moment.

  Zzzzd. Zzzzd.

  The phone vibrated again. It was damned annoying. Terry had no idea how people could actually function with such a distraction continually tugging at them. He had read an article about people who could feel their phones vibrating in their pockets when no calls were incoming or, even weirder, when no phone was in their pocket at all. Phantom Vibration Syndrome he remembered it being called. A lifetime in the Army kept him away from such societal needs as constant contact with everything in the digital world. Which suited his nature.

  Zzzzd. Zzzzd.

  Crap! It had to be either Craig or Liz checking on him again. He told them to not worry, that he wouldn’t do anything rash should he accidentally bump into Vlad while trolling the night spots in Old Town. But there they were, checking on him, not trusting the old guy. Hell, he had selected and trained almost every agent in the CSC. Nearly all. How Craig had slipped past him was still a mystery he would unravel at a later date. And he had had the Vamp Town beat long before those children were even old enough to watch Dracula movies. So for them to be all worried that he couldn’t handle himself—

  Zzzzd. Zzzzd.

  Shit! “Okay! Okay!” He removed his phone and looked at the screen. Three missed calls all from the dynamic duo and one text. Naomi! She’d returned his call. He tapped on the screen to open the entire message.

  Hey Uncle Jack. You want to hook up?

  He tapped the screen to respond. Sure do. Her response was quicker than he thought it would be.

  Zzzzd. Cool.

  He checked his watch. He had some time before he had to be back at the hotel for a Skype meeting with the team and base, but that was scheduled for five.

  Terry: How about a late lunch?

  Zzzzd. Today? Busy all day but free at night

  Terry: Tonight? Sure. Where? When?

  Zzzzd. Meet me at Shanghai Tunnel Bar. 2nd and Ankeny. 9

  Terry: Good. See you then

  Zzzzd. Love U

  Reading that brought a smile to Terry. He’d been AWOL from the family for so long he wasn’t confident he deserved her love. Not that he was sure what, exactly, he did deserve, but he guessed he would learn more about that tonight. He couldn’t miss the team meeting, not in good form that, but he also had to see his niece. Nine tonight gave him plenty of time to do both.

  He opened up the map app on his phone. He recognized Ankeny as an old Portland name, one of the founders he thought, but he needed the memory jog regarding the actual location of the street she had directed him to. He typed Shanghai Tunnel Bar and got the red arrow/dot thing pointing at the corner of SW Ankeny and Second Ave. just off Burnside the main east/ west boulevard. The bar was near the section of the Burnside known as Skid Road. (Not Skid Row. It always bugged him when he heard that term pronounced incorrectly.) And even though things had cleaned up some since the last time he was here there was still plenty of evidence that life’s hard-luck cases still congregated here.

  As a kid, he stayed away from this part of Old Town. There was no end to guys down on their luck hanging out in doorways passing a bottle in a bag back and forth. In a city that was no stranger to vice, this area had been its beating heart. The sad part was that he seemed to remember the majority of those lost men were Native Americans, who had left the desolation of their reservati
ons only to get caught in a web of self-destruction, seemingly unable to find worth anywhere else but at the bottom of the proverbial bottle. To a young Jack Terry, those drunk Native Americans looked to him to have gotten even the shorter end of the stick than the blacks in this white city.

  Studying the map, he saw the bar Naomi picked for their meeting—reunion?—was not too far from the Chinese Garden he was standing near. Well, that made it easier for him to find later. In fact, the map showed he had been near the corner of Ankeny and Second earlier when he had stopped to look into that funky doughnut shop, Voodoo Doughnut. For a brief moment, he almost went inside, intrigued by the Pepto Bismol flavored icing, but tempted by the bacon slice on top of a maple bar.

  He touched on a thumbnail photo of the bar at the bottom of the map, which opened onto a gallery of images. Terry scrolled through the pictures showing what the kids called a dive bar— dark, intimate lighting and a wall lined with booze bottles behind the bar. The description indicated it was located in the basement of the building meaning it was underground. The dark, below-grade aspect of it, along with the name, played off the stories of the old Shanghai tunnels and the map located the joint close to the center of where they were supposed to have been. Aside from all that, it looked like a fun place to have a drink and reconnect with his niece.

  Nevertheless, it was quite a coincidence, meeting in a place called the Shanghai Tunnel, considering why he was in town in the first place.

  ««« ‡ »»» THE SKYPE MEETING with Control was a total waste of time. Terry didn’t like meetings for that very reason. But sometimes, rarely, vital information was passed on. And he had to admit live, face-to-face sit-downs made it easier to understand nuanced meanings through body language that even satellite teleconferencing could not reproduce. So, meetings? Okay, not all were a time-suck, but this meeting? A waste.

  He couldn’t even remember what Cole had said, nor the conversation that followed. Maybe it wasn’t the meeting, or Cole, or anyone else. All Terry could think about was a truly monumental meeting he would be having with Naomi. He spent most of the time letting the voices of his comrades filter into one ear, letting their words bounce around in his brain while weighing the good of such a ‘family reunion’ against the terrifyingly bad emotional confrontation it could turn into.

  Mercifully, the meeting ended around 7:30; giving him enough time to freshen up before he headed back into the city. As he prepped Terry felt his confidence waver, afraid his niece would judge him unfairly. Which shirt should he wear? Was his hair presentable? Were his teeth clean? He gave himself one last inspection in the room mirror and looked down at the new body cam. He hesitated before reaching out and attaching it to his jacket. If they had described how this gadget functioned accurately, he wasn’t all that crazy about making his family life a public reality event for anyone to watch. But the rules were the camera had to be worn at all times when outside of personal space, such as a hotel room. No exceptions. And what the hell, he might even run into Vlad on the streets? A longshot to be sure, but what if? It was night after all. Then he reached for the room keycard, grabbed the car fob, and he was out the door.

  The drive back into town was less painful than he imagined. The late hour must have helped but locating a parking pot was a horse of a different color. He circled the area a few times getting totally confused by the one-way streets and the NO TURNS signs, not to mention the flocks of people rambling from bar to bar, crossing in front of traffic without a care in the world. Wasn’t this a work night? Did anyone work anymore? Finally, he saw a car pulling out of small surface lot not too far from the bar. Counting himself lucky, he gladly paid the extortionist rate and headed down the street.

  Outside the bar entrance, he stopped and got a good shot of the name on the door. Shanghai Tunnel Bar. Who needed to use their cell phone camera when you had a body cam recording everything? Everyone at the Center would get a hoot over the establishment’s name. Then he entered in to a cozy, streetlevel bar and followed the signs down the stairs to the larger, expansive, basement. Just as the pictures online showed—dark, the wall of booze, dramatically lit with colored lights and Chinese lanterns, loud music (not shown in the photos) and a fair number of customers.

  Terry stepped up to the bar and ordered a drink. He almost had to use his drill instructor voice for the bartender to hear, but she just gave him a nod, turned to grab some bottles and got to mixing. Waiting for his cocktail, he scanned the room. Aside from the music—Metal? Thrasher? He really didn’t know what to call it—he liked the vibe of the place. Maybe they’d be open to some Ellington. Or not. Wonder if she’s here already? He turned in the opposite direction and landed into the arms of a woman.

  “Uncle Jack!”

  ««« ‡ »»» MINUTES AFTER THE their first contact, Terry could tell that something wasn’t right. Words would not form answers to Naomi’s questions. They weren’t questions as such, but a running monologue flowing out of her mouth, more in an attempt to satisfy curious onlookers than to communicate with her uncle. Whatever he was experiencing, he was powerless, unable to control the most basic of movements. When his body did move, it was not of his own volition, but like he was a marionette, legs lifting only at the pull of a string.

  Fuck! He yelled at himself, berating the rookie mistake, as the realization of his position became clear and felt foolish at being caught so effortlessly. Naomi! How could—

  His niece grabbed his hand, and he involuntarily followed her through the semi-busy bar. They went down a dim hallway past a couple doors marked as restrooms, and past a few customers who were lined up waiting to relieve themselves. They continued down the passage now, almost devoid of light until they came upon a door. Naomi took a key from around her neck, unlocked it, pushed it open—rusted hinges whined as they were called to duty—and pulled Terry through and into a dark void, turning completely black after she shut the door behind them.

  At least I got a shot of the bar exterior before walking into the trap. Hopefully, they’ll see it. Terry thought. Without the benefit of light, he could not tell where they were going. All he knew was that he was moving and there was nothing he could do to resist. One step after another. Terry felt his body being directed around a corner, over some rubble he guessed was a pile of bricks, straight down another passage, and then there was another turn and a duck under something low overhead—Beams? Pipes?—and another turn. This new space was damp and smelled of wet earth. The inky blackness clung to him like a heavy coat. He thought he heard dripping water reverberating faintly off hard surfaces. Then there was a muffled, thump, thump, above like the sound of a car driving through a pothole. His feet became wet as water from the many puddles he traipsed through seeped into his shoes which weren’t as water resistant as he had hoped.

  How can Naomi see in the dark? Has she been turned? He rubbed against a rough wall at one point—rock?—then almost lost balance as the wall gave way into a void—another passage leading somewhere else? The floor took a decidedly downward slant, and then they rounded another turn. Terry was pushed, pulled, compelled to walk further into the depths of an abyss.

  With nothing to distract him, Terry was free to analyze his tactical situation, which he was able to sum up with some fancy military jargon, BOHICA—Bend Over, Here It Comes.

  Stupid!

  But upon reflection, he could see the imminent possibility Vlad would have found his troubled niece in and amongst the lost and miserable people he was plainly preying on. Terry recognized he shouldn’t have been so trusting—it was possible for anyone in Portland to be a familiar of Vlad’s, or even a vampire for that matter. After all, this was Vlad’s domain.

  Terry had let emotion lower his guard, something he learned not to do—the hard way—when he was in Nam. That pretty girl, couldn’t have been older than fifteen, with a basket of some kind of fruit, smiling as she approached the street-side cafe he and his buddies were sitting in eating noodles. One guy pulled out a buck and waved her over to buy
some, she pulled a grenade out of the basket instead of fruit and handed it to the eighteenyear-old American. It exploded killing them both, injuring the rest of them. Who could have guessed that kid was Viet Cong? From then on, however, everyone looked like V.C. to him.

  He should have anticipated the possibility Naomi, as much as anyone, could have been swept into the vampire’s orbit. She had been in search of something, someone, and monsters such as Vlad took maximum advantage of such wanderers. But Terry had let feelings cloud his judgment—guilt for not looking after his brother’s family as promised. God! Denial was more than a long river in Egypt, as the old saw went. And now the evidence was staring him in the face as he had no other explanation for her ability to navigate these winding tunnels in the dark without light.

  They made a right-angle turn, the floor had leveled out, and now he could see a dim flicker of light bleeding out from a break in the lining of the pitch-black tunnel. It looked like they may have reached the end of the journey. And he suspected this might also be his personal end of the line.

  As Terry was being compelled to walk through the opening, he heard himself chastise any number of his trainees about emotional distractions.

  I am not training your brain to remember.

  I am training your muscles to remember.

  When you are in the shit, I do not want you to stop and think about what to do next.

  I want you to act without wasting any time consulting your Goddamned brain.

  Muscle memory, not mental memory.

  Your job is not about thinking, it’s about acting!

  Not even remembering his own rant, Terry had dropped his guard and walked right into a trap. He chuckled at the irony of his retirement ending so abruptly, and all because of a greenhorn mistake of underestimating the enemy.