Shrouds of Darkness

by Brock Deskins

  I tell Dr. Morison about my midnight meal, my seconds, and the attempted assassination with my usual aplomb. This was far from the first time I have related similar stories and he stopped being shocked years ago.

  “It sounds like quite a stressful evening.”

  I give a shrug he cannot possibly see, but he knows me well enough to interpret my silence.

  “Deny it all you like, but inside you dwells a conscience that is only going to continue to haunt you like this until you face it and accept its existence.”

  “Not possible,” I growl into the receiver. “A conscience would be extremely inconvenient given my condition and occupational requirements.”

  I hear him sigh into the phone. “Nevertheless, it is there and it will not be ignored. Because it is a part of you, it is as stubborn as you are. It has been a while since we sat down and talked. Why don’t you schedule an appointment with my secretary? I’ll tell her to make room for you at your convenience.”

  My first inclination is to reject his offer. “Are you an aspiring pilot too?”

  Stanley doesn’t get the reference but he’s smart guy and knows that it’s a shot at his hourly rate.

  “Alright, I’ll call Jeanine tomorrow even though it’s a waste of time. You’ve had ten years to fix me, you old fraud.”

  I hang up the phone, cutting him off in mid-laugh. There is no way I am going to rest again now, so I decide to put my idle hands to work. I pull out a loose brick and press the button hidden behind it. With a hiss of hydraulics, a section of floor raises up a few inches then rolls back just enough for me navigate the short flight of stairs hidden beneath it.

  Fluorescent lights flicker to life at my approach, revealing racks of weapons of all makes and models. Behind the various handguns, rifles, submachine guns, smoke and flash grenades and a host of other lethal devices run several water pipes, gas lines, and electrical conduits.

  I converted the old maintenance passage and hid the entrance to it when I bought the building over twenty years ago. Along with my host of lethal weaponry, a couple of workbenches take up much of the remaining available space up. One side is dedicated to machining with a grinder, drill press, a small metal lathe, and a few other things necessary to fabricate those tools I cannot easily buy off the open market. Across from that lies a host of electrical components from which I make my transmitters, detonators, and other nifty little James Bond-type toys.

  I select a weapon at random, break it down to its smallest components, clean it, examine the parts for damage, and then put it all back together again. I have become highly proficient over the years and even this level of scrutiny and care takes only a few minutes before I move on to another one and repeat the process.

  Some people would call me anally retentive; my shrink calls it obsessively compulsive. I call it taking pride in my work and respecting the materials of my trade. Few things are more annoying than pressing the button on a transmitter connected to several pounds of plastic explosive only to have it fail to ignite because you allowed the moist air to corrode the contacts.

  I lose track of time being so lost in my ritual when I hear a chime indicating that someone has walked into my office upstairs. I have company. The fact that they followed the sign that instructs them to climb the steel stairs to my office and stay indicates that it is likely a client. Despite feeling a bit taxed from my gunshot wound, I am glad to possibly have a paying customer so soon after having spent a good portion of last night’s paycheck on my lawyer and desert cleanup.

  I reassemble the Brugger & Thomet TP9 that I am performing my maintenance on and stalk back up the steps into my converted home. The place always looks cavernous after spending a few hours below ground in my little armory. I grab a fresh shirt and slip on my trench coat from the closet that contains no less than a dozen identical replacements.

  Slipping my blade and an m1911 .45 into my pocket, I ascend the inner stairs up to my office. I use as many of my senses as I can to ascertain the situation upstairs. Halfway up, I can hear two voices, one male and one female. The male’s voice sounds a bit hostile. As I near the top of the stairs, I get the faint whiff of perfume. It is pleasant and lightly applied. The voices become distinct to my well-attuned ears even through the thick, steel door.

  Despite its weight, the door opens effortlessly and without appreciable sound, as only I know how to do, and step into my inner office. The pair waiting on me is just beyond the closed wooden door that leads to my outer office where a sign tells people to either wait or call for an appointment. Apparently, they have decided to wait.

  The man is apparently displeased with the decision to come see me. I listen to him as he says several unkind things about me, most notably the fact that I am a vampire. If this weren’t enough to give me pause, I receive an olfactory slap in the face that rocks me on my heels and causes my mostly healed wound to throb in sympathy. Beneath the pleasant scent of perfume lays the distinct fragrance of half-weres.

  Now this is really getting interesting. I can go months without getting so much as a whiff of a mongrel or full werewolf. Now I cross paths with three in the matter of a few hours. I’m not the type to believe in coincidence and I immediately go on alert.

  The voices abruptly cease as the mongrels’ own keen senses detect my presence as I near the door. I casually open the door with my left hand while maintaining a firm grip on the .45 in my jacket pocket with my right. I examine every facet of detail of the room in a second. Nothing seems out of the ordinary with the exception of the two super-natural creatures within.

  A young man stands with an aggressive posture next to the cheap, vinyl couch that is the only piece of furniture in the room. He is tall, handsome, and well built. With his muscular body, blue eyes, and blond hair he looks like he was pulled right out of an underwear commercial. It must be fruit of the loom underwear because he looks at me as if he just bit into a lemon. I can feel the tension in the air like static electricity.

  Sitting on the ugly, orange sofa is a young woman of extraordinary beauty. Her long, golden hair cascades over her shoulders better than halfway to her narrow waist and seems to glow with a light all of its own. She has the same blue eyes as the slightly younger man standing defensively over her, but that physical similarity is where any comparison ends.

  She is poised, even slightly amused, and flashes me a broad smile as I stand in the doorway. With feline grace, she rises to her feet and steps towards me. Her brother, I am beyond certain that is what he is, attempts to grab her arm to stop her, but she slaps his hand away and approaches me, leaving her sibling red-faced behind her.

  I turn and stalk back into my office, snubbing her attempted handshake and cutting off her greeting in mid sentence. I flop heavily into the chair behind my heavy desk and watch them enter my office in my wake.

  “Have a seat or curl up on the floor, whatever you prefer,” I say in a snarky tone.

  She takes a seat in one of the two empty chairs in front of my desk while the young man looms over and just behind her right side. The kid looks about to reply with a rude comment of his own, or possibly jump across my desk in hopes of throttling me for my less than gracious demeanor. His sister stops both of these with a raised hand and smiles at me once more.

  “Mr. Malone, I can see that you know what we are and you probably know that we know what you are,” the young woman says.

  With my usual charm I reply, “Yeah, hard to miss that wet dog odor in my lobby. You must hate this kind of weather.”

  I think she knows I’m trying to bait her and refuses to yield to my attempt to provoke her but I won’t give up easily. I want them to get angry so they let something slip that they don’t want to talk about. Her brother on the other hand takes the bait with eagerness but is once again interrupted before he can verbalize his response.

  “Mr. Malone, I have been told that you are very good at finding people. We need you to find someone, someone that may require some discretion that may not be suitable for in
volving the police.”

  I have a real good idea where this is going but I want to see how much information she is willing to give me without me having to wring it out of her later, so I remain quiet and let her continue on her own.

  Seeing that I am not going to ask, she continues. “My name is Katherine Goldstein, and this is my brother, Roger. Three nights ago my father, Martin Goldstein, did not come home and we have not heard from him since.”

  Despite her outward calm, I detect a quavering of true concern in her voice.

  “Maybe he just got whiff of a nice poodle in heat and got distracted,” I say flippantly.

  I finally struck that nerve I’ve been tweaking since I first saw them. I find that people are more honest when they are angry and unable to think up lies or hold things back. My methods don’t exactly endear me to my clients but it makes my job a great deal easier.

  “You son of a bitch!” the high-strung kid shouts as he lunges forward, arms outstretched and his hands reaching for my throat.

  His mongrel blood is truly apparent now. The kid is fast but his sister is faster. Katherine practically leaps from her chair and plants herself firmly between her enraged brother and my charming self. She stiff-arms him hard in the chest and stops him cold. Granted, it has as much to do with him not being willing to bowl over the young woman as it is her own formidable strength.

  “Roger, don’t,” she orders firmly, staring straight into his hate-filled eyes.

  “Yeah, Roger, don’t,” I say with a wry smile.

  Katherine spares a moment to shoot me an exasperated look before facing her brother again. “We need him to find dad. Please, he’s trying to make us angry and you’re falling for it. Just be still.”

  “Yeah, Roger,” I pipe in once more, “why don’t you go curl up in the corner over there and lick your balls while the grown-ups talk.”

  To his credit, Roger is able to compose himself. “Jealous?”

  “I’d have to like you a whole lot more to be jealous.”

  The kid doesn’t lie down like a good dog but he does pace to the corner of the room a few steps away where he stands with crossed arms and a barely suppressed look of anger on his face.

  Satisfied that her brother is in control of himself, Katherine turns back to me, plants her palms against the top of my desk, and gives me a hard look similar the one she used to halt her perturbed sibling. Uh oh, I think I may be in trouble now.

  “Mr. Malone, if you are through playing your little game may we please get to the business of finding my father? I am perfectly willing to tell you anything you wish to know if it will help you find him.”

  I lean forward and return her gaze, my own hands planted firmly on the desktop. “The problem, Ms. Goldstein, is that it is the client that thinks it is for them to decide what information is necessary for me to get my job done instead of me. You seem like a woman that is accustomed to being in control. Can you let go of that control and let me decide what I need to know?”

  That beautiful smile creeps back onto her near-perfect face. “And are you ever not in control, Mr. Malone?” It is obviously a rhetorical question and she continues before I can answer. “I will answer any question you have, honestly and fully, to the best of my ability if you feel it is important.”

  I am surprised to find that I actually believe that she means what she just says. I gesture back to the chair she recently vacated and she straightens her skirt before resuming to her seat. She folds her hands delicately in her lap and attentively awaits my questions.

  “Very well, Ms. Goldstein, tell me about your father.”

  “Please call me Katherine. May I call you Leo?”

  “No.”

  I think to put her off with my simple rejection but quickly discover disappointment. My contrariness only seems to amuse her. I find that infuriating yet strangely becoming. This woman is trouble in high heels.

  “My father is an accountant. He is a kind and gentle man who practically dotes on his family. He is deeply in love with my mother so your presumption that he ran off with some poodle, human or otherwise, is beyond reasonable assumption.”

  “Did your father have any enemies? Did he owe anyone any money?”

  “No and no. My father is very responsible and rather innocuous. He is also extremely honest and would never do anything to cause a problem with any of his clients.”

  The way she phrases that response immediately tweaks my interest. “You think that some of his clients have the capacity to do something to someone that displeases them?”

  I got an ‘aha’ moment as I watch conflicting emotions cross that lovely face of hers. This is where my clients start to lie to me and hold things back. I’ve seen it too many times to be fooled. She disappoints me again by being honest.

  “My father’s responsibilities include accounting and bookkeeping for some dangerous people. People that are very capable of making someone disappear, but my father would never cross them. He is a businessman and a very good one.”

  This complicates things. Generally, in a situation like this it can be safely assumed that Martin has somehow run afoul of one of his mob clients and gotten himself whacked and disposed of. However, I can reasonably assume that these people were unaware of their accountant’s ability to shift into a flesh-rending killing machine and would have found themselves on the losing end of a couple hundred pounds of angry, nigh-unstoppable death.

  Like a flash of lightning, a thought strikes me swift and hard. “Where did you say your father disappeared?”

  “He called my mother from his office Friday night at around 10:00 pm and said he was on his way home.”

  “And where is your father’s office located?”

  I pull up a mental map as she tells me the address. It is only a couple blocks from where Angel said they found the torn up remains of three corpses. Maybe a client had tried to rub him out and found out the hard way that it was going to be no easy task.

  “Please, Mr. Malone, help us,” Katharine urges.

  I nod my head thoughtfully. “Very well, Ms. Goldstein, however you should be aware that my rates increase substantially any time I have to deal with werewolves or vampires.”

  Roger gets an even sourer look upon his face, but without even a backward glance, a raised hand from his sister cuts short his argument.

  “That is certainly understandable, Leo, given the inherent risks involved in dealing with our kind,” she says with a smile as she stands and extends a delicate hand towards me.

  I ignore the polite gesture but I am surprised to find that I have to resist the urge to do so. I have no problem admitting to myself that she is a very attractive woman, but her true charm is the strength of personality that seems to emanate from her like the heat of a bonfire. Fortunately, decades of being a surly, cold-hearted prick makes that urge little more than a minor nuisance.

  As she retracts her hand, she smiles at me as if her gaze pierces my invisible shield and sees my little emotional battle. She turns with military precision and makes for the door with Roger close behind her. He turns to me just before crossing the threshold of the doorway.

  “You had better worth this expense,” he warns me with a parting glare.

  Upon the advice of my shrink, I had gotten myself a dog several years ago. Stanley seemed to think that since I was unwilling to tolerate human company that perhaps a pet would help me maintain some sort of social dependency or some such crap.

  That was right after I first started seeing him and Dr. Morison was not accustomed to tailoring his advice to best suit his few undead clients. First of all, dogs do not care for the presence of vampires or werewolves. It took me two years to build enough trust just so the little shit wouldn’t bite me every time I walked into the room.

  When he died three years ago, it just served to remind me once again that I would continue to watch those around me die off as I continued my unnatural existence, forcing me to change my identity every few decades.

  “Roger,�
� I call out as I reach into the wide, center drawer of my desk, “you were a very good boy,” I tell him and toss a dog biscuit at him that was years past its freshness date.

  Given his obvious temper and lack of humor, I expect him to hurl it back at me with a sharp invective but once again, I am caught by surprise as he catches the treat in one hand and takes a large bite from it. With a self-satisfied grin of triumph, he tips the biscuit towards his brow in a mock salute and saunters out of the door.

  Damn. Now why did he have to go and do that? If he keeps that up, I may start to like the angry little mutt.

  I lean back in my chair with my hands behind my head and mull over what Angel told me last night. Tracking down a werewolf means I will have to go and talk to other weres. Not an appealing prospect. It’s a good thing I’m such a likeable sort or getting information out of them could really be difficult.

  I am still formulating my plan of attack when the phone rings.

  “Malone,” I say into the receiver.

  “Leo, It’s Raj, from the coroner’s office.”

  “I’m glad you clarified that. I thought maybe it was Raj from my Hindu prayer group,” I reply sarcastically.

  “Always a pleasure talking to you, Leo. Anyway, I have some—things down here I need you to take a look at.”

  Raj is this borough’s chief medical examiner and the only other human that knows what I am. We crossed paths years back while I was a Sheriff hunting down a rogue that was leaving the bodies of his victims around for the normals to find.

  Normally this isn’t too big of a problem, but Raj was far too smart and far too curious for his own good. He began doing some investigating of his own and asking questions that were going to get him killed real fast. I thought it was better to have someone in his position in on our little secret society than to simply quiet him—permanently. So I told him everything.

  He impressed me with the calm in which he took this disclosure. Most people would be in a panic to find out that their species was not at the top of the food chain. They are especially put off when informed that having that simple knowledge marked them for immediate extermination.