Shrouds of Darkness

by Brock Deskins

“I would choose a different description if continued health is anywhere near one of your priorities.”

  Marvin looks like he going to launch a retort then apparently chooses the more prudent course of action by continuing.

  “I looked to see if any of the file contents may had been tampered with. Files are made up from packets of data. Each packet has what is called a header. These headers have tiny bits of code that tells the receiving computer what to expect in each packet, how many packets are being sent, and the computer that sent them. Each packet header also has a time stamp showing the date of creation and time sent and such. I found that the contents of a few particular packets did not match what the header said should be in them.”

  “So you’re saying someone faked some log entries?”

  “Exactly. It’s like someone took a letter, steamed it open, took out the letter inside, and replaced it with one of their own. You think you’re getting the original letter with handwritten addresses, cancelation stamp and all, but in realty you’re getting a fake and unless you know what to look for, you never know the difference.”

  I ask the hacker, “Is there any way to get the original logs to see who changed them or accessed the sample?”

  “That’s what I was working on before my place got trashed. Vtech has an offsite data storage facility that backs up all of their data including the security logs. Unless the person that changed the onsite logs is a real computer whiz, I bet he didn’t check the backups and couldn’t hack the storage site’s systems even if he thought about it.”

  “I made a call and you should be back online by tomorrow afternoon,” I inform him.

  Marvin goes back to doing whatever it is he does on his phone while I go over current events in my mind. I have one confirmed Sheriff in on this and a strong assumption of a second one at Marvin’s apartment. I have a strong suspicion that Quinn was the masked man I fought in the warehouse. Although his voice was distorted by the acoustics of the place as well as the mask he wore, his movements were very similar to the ones he used when he attacked me in the headquarters. Of course, it could just be that I really want it to be him so I automatically fill in the blanks with him already in mind.

  I would have liked to have taken a couple of them alive, particularly Quinn if that was him, but I doubt I would have gotten much information. The minions probably don’t know much and Quinn probably wouldn’t tell me who is in charge. Vampires have an ingrained sense of loyalty to their creator. It’s tied up in the genes somehow although it’s in no way total. It creates a familial bond like that of a child to a parent. It can be broken through abuse and it diminishes with time.

  A hesitant knocking at my door interrupts my thinking. I open it after looking outside to see who it is. A bedraggled man who appears to have been recently roused from his bed looks at me nervously and the scent of fear seeps out of his pores. Across the street, I spy a white van with the logo of a cable company emblazoned across the side.

  “Marvin, it’s for you,” call back inside, waking Marvin who is slumbering with his face pressed against my table.

  Marvin informs me that the job is finished less than two hours later. Now I just need to get that computer equipment. There is one thing I can give Marvin now however.

  “Marvin, I want you to keep this at hand at all times,” I tell him hand him a ten gauge, double-barreled shotgun. “It’s loaded so all you have to do is aim and squeeze the trigger.”

  The gun is an antique but in terrific condition. It’s ease of use, the massive bore firing three and a half inch double-ought buckshot, and barrels sawed down to the length of my arm, make it a good weapon to have on hand.

  “Damn! This is straight up old-school gangster shit right here!” Marvin crows and starts waving the gun around before I grab it out of his hands and cuff him in the side of his head.

  “It’s not a toy, Marvin! I don’t even want to see you touch it unless you need to shoot someone. You got it?”

  “Hostile! Marvin grumbles as he flops down on my bed and goes to sleep.

  I almost kick him out of my bed but I won’t be using it and he needs the sleep if I expect him to be of any use to me tomorrow so I let him be. I mentally add an air mattress to my shopping list. A phone call breaks me out of my contemplations a few hours later.

  “Leo, it’s Raj. If you have time, I think you may want to take a look at something.”

  “Another attack?”

  “Yes, but this one has some interesting hallmarks that might make more sense to you than to me.”

  “I’m on my way,” I inform Raj then go wake up Blackylocks who is still sleeping in my bed. “Marvin, wake up. I’m stepping out. Don’t open the door for anyone unless a guy shows up with your computer shit. Make sure Yuri sent him. He should tell you Molotov sent him or something to that affect. If anyone gets in, shoot them and run like hell.”

  Since I prefer to keep my bike out of the spotlight as much as possible, I elect to take a cab. Besides, I can add the fare to my list of expenses. I find Raj in his office but he waves me to the exam room as soon as I enter.

  Raj pulls a sheet off a body already laid out on the metal exam table. The body is less savaged than most of the other attacks but the wounds look similar. Raj begins pulling back the torn flesh and pointing out the distinct aspects of the gruesome injuries.

  “At first I thought it was just another attack like the others. You can see how the flesh was torn away as if by claws and teeth. But look here. See this clean line in the muscle tissue?”

  “It looks cut.”

  “Exactly. Now I’m not an expert on werewolves, but I assume that a transformed wolf is not packing a knife and slicing up his meal into bite size pieces. Now look at the bone of the humorous near the elbow and tell me what you see.”

  I peer into the massive gash that Raj is holding open with a pair of retractors and examine the exposed bone. “It looks like a cut.”

  “And deep enough to nearly sever the arm. Come look at the X-ray I took.”

  The medical examiner flips on the fluorescent light of the view box and illuminates the X-ray already in place. “Here’s the cut. You can see that it’s a clean cut that almost makes it through the entire bone. This means it was a large blade wielded by a reasonably strong individual. But the most interesting part is the top down image of the same injury.”

  Raj shifts my attention to another X-ray. “Here is the same cut taken from a top-down viewpoint. The dark line is the cut. You can see by the angle that the victim probably had time to raise his arm in an attempt to ward off the blow. It cuts through the soft tissue, shears into the bone from the lateral side, and stops about three-quarters of the way through to the medial. But look at this nearly perfect triangular protuberance inside the bone.”

  “The blade had a notch in it,” I respond knowingly.

  “As good as a fingerprint. You find that sword or machete and you have your killer.”

  I already know who my killer is. At the very least, I have it narrowed down to two suspects. When Quinn jumped me, I used one of the Sheriff’s blades to block his attack, which put an appreciable notch in both blades. This attack occurred only a few blocks from the warehouse, which makes sense since I inflicted an appreciable wound on the masked man. I sincerely doubt that the vampire I fought in the warehouse was the nervous kid I borrowed the sword from, so that leaves Quinn.

  As much as it pleases me to affirm Quinn as a bad guy, I do not know what to really do with the information. Sure, I can track him down and kill him but that gets me no closer to finding the others behind this entire fiasco. When I end him, I need to do it in a way to maximize the amount of damage I inflict on his organization as a whole. Still, it feels good to have at least one certainty on this case to follow.

  “I hope that helps you.”

  “It does, thanks, Raj. You should have been a real doctor.”

  “I like this job. My patients don’t play me to get drugs and I don’t have to worry about getti
ng sued,” he replies, ignoring my playful insult.

  I am just about to call another cab when two Cadillacs pull up, disgorging six large men toting some serious firepower. I recognize three of them as Yuri’s men, which saves everyone a lot of trouble.

  “Malone, Yuri wants to see you—now,” a man I know as Yaakov, informs me.

  “Tell Yuri I’m a little busy right now. He can call me if it’s important.”

  “Yuri says now. He said to say please. If still you do not come, we stop saying please. Please come now.”

  There is a powerful tension in the air that I am surprised not to have noticed at first. These men are very serious—and very afraid. Something must have happened for Yuri to take such a heavy-handed approach with me, so I climb into the back of the lead Cadillac, sandwiched between Yaakov and a man I’m not familiar with. I don’t bother asking questions, certain that they are not likely to answer them.

  My unease increases as I notice that we are heading into Queens. Yuri’s operation stretches into Queens but not far. His operations are centered mainly in Brooklyn, so I have to wonder why he isn’t in Brooklyn now when I am fairly certain he was last night.

  We come to a stop in front of a squat, three-story building that looks more like a bunker with urban camouflage. All the first floor windows are bricked up and thick bars cover the few windows of the upper two floors. The only visible door looks like it was salvaged from a battleship.

  No one stands guard outside, but once we go in, after having phoned ahead to gain entry, several men are standing guard inside and armed as though preparing for war. Men who look weary, scared, and ready for violence grip AK-47s, Uzis, and several AA-12 fully automatic shotguns.

  My escort takes me to a room with a door similar to that of the outer door that leads into a room near the center of the building. The room is far too small for so many people and the combined smell of sweat and vodka nearly bowls me over. Counting my escort, there are nearly a dozen men in a room that can comfortably accommodate four. Of all the people in the room, only two really catch my interest.

  Yuri sits behind a solid desk with several empty bottles of vodka and shot glasses randomly decorating its surface along with a Russian SP-12 probably loaded with some non-standard ammunition. The figure that really takes me by surprise is Freak, balled up in a corner, rocking, and silently weeping. This does not bode well at all but since I am not stripped of my weapons I figure I’m not in too much trouble.

  “What’s going on, Yuri? It seems a little tense around here,” I say to break the ice.

  Yuri laughs but in a way that actually increases the tension instead of relieving it. It’s the laugh of a man that’s spitting in the face of his executioner.

  “Tense, yes, is very tense. Focking devils kill half my men and I am very tense.”

  “Who killed half your men, Yuri, what devils, when? Tell me what happened.”

  Yuri throws back another shot of vodka and slams the glass on the table. “Early this morning, maybe two, three hours after you call me for focking Star Trek Xeon phasor or whatever de fock you call it. Focking devils come and start killing everybody! They shoot my men with guns, hack them with focking swords, and they tear my men apart with their bare focking hands like animals! We fight back hard. We shoot them but they ignore bullets or get back up if we hit them enough to knock them down. They were so fast, so strong. We run and fight our way to the cars and drive away.”

  Yuri pours and slams back another shot of vodka, shatters the glass against the wall, snatches the pistol off his desk, and points it at my head. I refuse to flinch and meet his gaze dead on.

  “I saw you. I saw you take bullet in my club. Focking vest my hairy Georgian ass! I know vests. I shoot people with vests and you were no wearing no focking vest! You took that bullet and you didn’t care. Just—like—them. I bet if I shoot you right now, you get back up just—like—them,” Yuri says, punctuating his theory that I am one of them.

  “That’s right, Yuri, I took that bullet. I took that bullet for you,” I remind him.

  “You work for me many years, Leo Malone. You tell me honestly. Whose side are you on?”

  “I’m on the same side I’m always on—mine.”

  Yuri stares into my eyes a full ten seconds before slapping the pistol back onto the desk and sitting down. “My bebia—grandmother—she is Romani. She tells us children’s stories her deda and her bebia tell her when she is little girl. She tells us of the night men—strigoi—who hunt at night, killing and feeding off blood of people. She tells us these strigoi are so fast and so strong they slaughter entire villages. We think they are just stories to frighten children to make them go to bed, but I see my men killed by these things and I don’t know what to think. You, Leo Malone, you tell me what to think.”

  “I think you should listen to your grandmother,” I reply ominously. “How did you end up with him?” I ask, inclining my head towards Freak.

  “After we flee, we see him running, so hard I think he is about to have heart attack. I think Hanako sends these things to kill me so my men grab him up.”

  “And Hanako, what about him?”

  “He says they are all dead. He and his brother were the last alive and when his brother fell he just ran. Been big pile of blubbering crap ever since. These things, more will come?”

  I shake my head uncertainly. “I don’t know, Yuri. I don’t know why they even attacked you and Hanako.”

  “I send out a few of my men. They say Carletto got hit too in East Bronx. He did not do as good as me but better than Hanako. This has to do with Martin?”

  “Martin is a tool in someone’s game. Why they are targeting local mafia is beyond me. Every time I think I start to put the puzzle together someone throws in a bunch more pieces that I’m not sure even goes to the one I’m trying to figure out.”

  “How many are there? Do they all want to kill me? How much should I be afraid?” Yuri asks me. “You think maybe they decide to sell drugs, prostitutes, and push Yuri out?”

  “I don’t know why they attacked. There is something going on inside the—organization—but I don’t exactly know what. Even if I think I know the what of it I’m not sure of the why.”

  “So not all want me dead?”

  “No,” I respond, shaking my head.

  Yuri looks thoughtful. “Ah, is power play. Yuri knows of power plays. Someone wants promotion, wants more power, more money.”

  “That’s my thinking but my main suspect has money and power.”

  “Never enough money and power for some people. Maybe he fears rival. Maybe he wants to make sure he stays in power or wants to make another look bad so he cannot get more power. Whatever, I don’t care. What I want to know is how to kill them. You know how to kill them, yes?”

  I give Yuri an evil smile. “Oh yes, I have become quite adept at killing them.”

  “Now that’s the Leo I know!” Yuri barks out with a laugh, a genuine laugh, not the gallows laughter from earlier. “Tell me how I kill them. If they come back for me, I will show them what it means to go to war with Molotov!”

  “If you shoot them enough, they will go down but they’ll get up eventually. The best way to kill them is to take the head off. Take out their knees then take off the head. Fire is also effective. They’ll burn like any man and when they die by fire they stay dead.”

  “Yes! Yuri knows all about fire. I will burn them, burn all that come for Molotov!”

  I have to call a cab since once again no one is gracious enough to drive me home after shanghaiing me. I am starting to feel as unappreciated as an ugly girl does the morning after prom night. Wham bam than you Leo you can find your own way home.

  I walk into my loft and stare in disbelief. It looks like a Radio Shack exploded in my house or the war room at NORAD.

  “Marvin, what the hell is all this?” I ask the hacker who is barely visible behind a wall of huge monitors.

  “This is command and control right here! This is where
I exercise my mad hacking skills.”

  “Why do you need so many monitors?”

  Marvin points to the various displays and explains. “This one shows my botnet; second largest in the world. I set it to attack the datacenter using thousands of computers all over the world. Each one is unknowingly running some code I wrote that seeks vulnerabilities in various parts of its system and exploits them when they find it. Once inside, it writes a small code giving me backdoor access to the server. When it does that, it sends me a message letting me know I’m in. This monitor goes to my main system here. It’s the one I actively work at when I need to get hands-on.”

  “So why does it look like you’re not doing anything?”

  “Oh I suppose you want to see me mash away on the keyboard like some retarded monkey like they show in the movies? Man, fuck Hollywood! Every time I see one of those morons pretending to be a hacker, typing away at a thousand words a minute without ever once hitting the space bar or enter key, I want to slap someone. Hacking is about running scripts. I write the scripts then let my botnet run it. This ain’t no Nintendo Wii game where the guy that waves his hands around the fastest wins. Please.”

  “Ok, what about this monitor?” I ask.

  “That’s for watching YouTube. Look, the monkey is drinking his own pee. He’s nasty!”

  “How Are you coming with getting into the system?”

  “Look, he stuck his finger up his butt and is gonna smell it. Oh that’s so nasty it knocked the little nigga out of the tree!”

  “Marvin, focus!”

  “Oh right. I’m getting close. I should have something pretty soon.”

  Sitting in my chair, I ponder the implications of vampires making a concerted attack against notable human figures. It violates all of the rules set by the Council, rules largely recognized around the world amongst the various ruling Councils.

  No vampires in recent history have belonged to major crime organizations. There is too much risk of exposure in such a high-profile career. Modern technology makes it too easy for law enforcement to track them.

  If this is a grab for underworld power, how do they expect the Council to sanction it? The Sheriffs are obviously compromised but surely not the entire department. If the Council loses control of them, they can call in Sheriffs from other regions to clean house. It has happened before where outside enclaves were forced to purge a rogue enclave for gross violation of the rules that threatened exposure.